Insider Trading and the Art Bubble

By James Kwak

I recently wrote two more articles for the Bull Market collection at Medium. The first was my explanation of the Second Circuit’s decision in United States v. Newman and Chiasson, which said that insider trading is only a crime if the original tipper gained a personal benefit from leaking confidential information, and if the eventual trader knew of that personal benefit. If you don’t like this outcome, the original problem is a poorly written Supreme Court opinion (isn’t that redundant?) from the 1980s, Dirks v. SEC.

The second article was a response to a column by James Stewart and a post by Felix Salmon about soaring prices in the art market—which, almost by definition, constitute a bubble.