insider trading question

[mary1]

What exactly is considered insider trading? Can you get convicted?

[trent]

Insider trading is buying or selling a stock based on non-public information that will affect the stock price if/when it's made public.

Many people belive that insider trading can be only from within the company - by employees, or officers of the corporation, however this is not true. Any outsider using non-public information to get unfair trading advantage can be accused of insider trading.

An example of insider trading is a company executive dumping shares on the market, before bad financial results are released to the general public.