Insider traders are smart

[BigNick]

Want to hide your insider trades from those pesky reporting requirements? Get your kids to do them! This study found very convincing evidence that 0-10 year olds are amazingly good at buying stocks shortly before they make dramatic gains.

[NYEXPAT]

Ahhh, reminds me of the "good ole day's", Security analyst's would get fire'd if they weren't trading on it!

[Htown Harry]

I see both of posters so far are living overseas and therefore may not be fully aware of the brokerage house strategies here in the U.S.

If the researchers take a look at the same 0-10 y.o. sample set here in the U.S., they would need to normalize the data for the brokerage firm where the account is held. E*TRADE in particular is aggressively marketing to young investors and its clients are showing great success.

ETrade 'Baby' Super Bowl Ad - YouTube

ETRADE Top 5 Baby Commercials - YouTube

[NW-Bound]

Excerpt from the linked article:

In a new study accepted for publication in the Journal of Finance, Henk Berkman at the University of Auckland, Paul Koch at the University of Kansas and Joakim Westerholm at the University of Sydney have uncovered a novel way to spot insider trading.

The researchers tracked half a million stock market accounts over a 15-year period between 1995 and 2010. The accounts were in Finland on the Nasdaq OMX Helsinki Exchange. Why Finland? It offered researchers unusual access to information about trades and information about investors, including their age.

Here in the US, there have been cases of the SEC discovering upper management of public companies trading on inside info via a relative's account. So, this is not really earth-shaking.

What I found curious is how researchers got access to private account info in Finland. Is that really public info that anyone can get access to? I do not think that is the case elsewhere, at least in the US.