MARK BARNES: Forex abuse: a more structured way to steal
My father once told me never to take a bet. "If you know you're right, you're stealing. If you don't, you're a fool," he'd say.
My father once told me never to take a bet. "If you know you're right, you're stealing. If you don't, you're a fool," he'd say. Insider trading is theft. Buying a share in the certain knowledge that you can sell it at a profit (if you are aware of a bid, say, that's about to be announced) is tantamount to stealing that embedded profit from the current owner who is unaware of the impending bid. Simple really, and yet it is rife. Front running is theft. Using an order that's big enough to probably (albeit not certainly) move the price to support your own trade is front running: buy before the order starts, stand back and watch the price ramp up and then sell before the order is finished - just another form of insider trading, enabled because stockbrokers could act as principle and agent. Ridiculous, rife. The foreign exchange markets were "exempt" from insider-trading accusations, on the basis that the volumes of both buyers and sellers were just too big for any single order or trader...
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