Wealth or Stealth? The Camouflage Effect in Insider Trading

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Ma, Jin, Xia, Weixuan, Zhang, Jianfeng
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Ma, Jin
Xia, Weixuan
Zhang, Jianfeng
author_facet Ma, Jin
Xia, Weixuan
Zhang, Jianfeng
contents We consider a Kyle-type model where insider trading takes place among a potentially large population of liquidity traders and is subject to legal penalties. Insiders exploit the liquidity provided by the trading masses to "camouflage" their actions and balance expected wealth with the necessary stealth to avoid detection. Under a diverse spectrum of prosecution schemes, we establish the existence of equilibria for arbitrary population sizes and a unique limiting equilibrium. A convergence analysis determines the scale of insider trading by a stealth index $γ$, revealing that the equilibrium can be closely approximated by a simple limit due to diminished price informativeness. Empirical aspects are derived from two calibration experiments using non-overlapping data sets spanning from 1980 to 2018, which underline the indispensable role of a large population in insider trading models with legal risk, along with important implications for the incidence of stealth trading and the deterrent effect of legal enforcement.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_06309
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Wealth or Stealth? The Camouflage Effect in Insider Trading
Ma, Jin
Xia, Weixuan
Zhang, Jianfeng
General Economics
Economics
Trading and Market Microstructure
We consider a Kyle-type model where insider trading takes place among a potentially large population of liquidity traders and is subject to legal penalties. Insiders exploit the liquidity provided by the trading masses to "camouflage" their actions and balance expected wealth with the necessary stealth to avoid detection. Under a diverse spectrum of prosecution schemes, we establish the existence of equilibria for arbitrary population sizes and a unique limiting equilibrium. A convergence analysis determines the scale of insider trading by a stealth index $γ$, revealing that the equilibrium can be closely approximated by a simple limit due to diminished price informativeness. Empirical aspects are derived from two calibration experiments using non-overlapping data sets spanning from 1980 to 2018, which underline the indispensable role of a large population in insider trading models with legal risk, along with important implications for the incidence of stealth trading and the deterrent effect of legal enforcement.
title Wealth or Stealth? The Camouflage Effect in Insider Trading
topic General Economics
Economics
Trading and Market Microstructure
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.06309