If this is unclear to you, let me explain. In the 1990s, I worked for a company called DSC, which bought a startup for which I worked called Optilink. I started plotting the market motions of our stock. Along with a generally rising price which made our Employee Stock Purchase Plan a major source of wealth, there a short-term oscillation that a friend described as a drunken sine wave. At the time, there many programmed trades. A while would buy 100,000 shares at say, $30/share and sell it the following day for $32/share. $200,000 gain more than covered the transaction costs.
I started doing the same. Of course, 100,000 shares was out of my range, but even 1000 shares was. The transaction costs and a 40% marginal income rate meant that it was profitable but not enough to justify the risks involved. When our stock crossed above $45/share, I stopped.
This was not insider trading. I had no special knowledge of what our company as a whole was doing. This was strictly being a minnow following the whales. (Bad metaphor; suggest better?)
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