alt Hacker NewsIt's a tax. I don't know if you specifically are one of the "taxation is theft" types, but it's absolutely wild how many of these are totally cool with the tax if it's funding insider trading payouts but not if it's paying for poor person healthcare or whatever.
In the absence of the insider trader selling you oil futures on the basis of his insider knowledge, what would you do?
You'd buy oil futures at broadly the same price from someone else (maybe a worse price! Because the presence of the insider selling is already driving the price down). So how exactly do you lose?
The only people who lose out are those whose limit orders don't get filled because the insider outbid them. The counterparty benefits from trading with the insider.