The Levelers
October 13, 2013·0 comments
The rules of equity markets are being rewritten in real time, but not through explicit argument or policy debate. Instead, regulators and prosecutors are slowly criminalizing the very activities that allow active managers to compete. The stated goal is fairness. The actual effect is the systematic elimination of any advantage that comes from knowing more than the consensus. What happens to markets when information asymmetries aren't just reduced but legally forbidden?
• A $30 million fine arrived for sharing research before publication, without any fraud or insider information involved. The analyst had written exactly what he would publish, but email timing violated regulatory consent decrees. The rules exist, everyone knows them, and violations carry consequences.
• The surveillance infrastructure to enforce these rules barely existed before 2009. The SEC established new offices for quantitative analysis, data mining, and pattern detection specifically to identify trading patterns that suggest information advantages. These tools transformed sleepy old rules into enforceable weapons.
• Asking a sell-side analyst for his opinion could soon be treated as criminal behavior. Regulators are expanding the definition of insider trading from material non-public facts to material non-public opinions. Fundamental stock-picking depends entirely on asking these questions.
• Company management has gone silent. Before the crackdown, investors could read body language and get behavioral signals during calls. Now CFOs say nothing that hasn't already been filed publicly, leaving investors with less information and more risk for the same potential reward.
• The endgame is a market where everyone knows exactly what everyone else knows at exactly the same time. This isn't accidental or a side effect. It's the intended outcome, pursued because politicians need to restore faith that the system isn't rigged. But eliminating information advantages doesn't create fairness. It creates guaranteed mediocrity.
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