"Black Edge" Biggest Insider-Trading Scandal in Wall Street

Every trader needs an edge, but not all edges are created equal. Recently I got in contact with Sheelah Kolhatkar, and agreed to write an article on her latest book. It is a must read! it gives a clear perspective on the use of Information while trading and we all know that in the Investing and trading scene, one of the most powerful edges is information. At SAC Capital, Jason Karp color coded information to teach his analysts "what was safe and what might be illegal." The white edge was "readily available information" - completely safe but not worth much. The gray edge might be (and probably was) material, nonpublic information. At SAC, the only way to be sure it wouldn't get the firm into trouble was to talk to its legal counsel, something few traders were eager to do. So gray slid into white. Black edge information was obviously illegal. Karp warned his analysts: "If you do one thing wrong, you're in jail and your life is ruined. There is no trade that's ever worth it." So check your Investment goals carefully with this ACalculator and the end of the second post for more Info

And yet. As one trader, asked if he knew of any fund that didn't traffic in inside information, answered: "No, they would never survive." The author adds: "In this way, black edge is like doping in elite-level cycling or steroids in professional baseball. Once the top cyclists and home-run hitters started doing it, you either went along with them or you lost."

   Agreement with Sheelah to write this post.      

Sheelah Kolhatkar's Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street (Random House, 2017) chronicles the government's ultimately disappointing effort to build a case of insider trading against the legendary Steven A. Cohen of SAC Capital. The story, extensively reported at the time, transfixed the hedge fund world and financial news junkies. A lot of people were cheering for the government.

Kolhatkar, a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of the widely discussed article "What If Women Ran Wall Street?", worked as a risk arbitrage analyst at two hedge funds before becoming a journalist. For this book, she relied not only on published press sources but on "hundreds of interviews with more than two hundred people, as well as voluminous court transcripts, exhibits, deposition testimony, SEC interview notes, notes taken by FBI agents during witness interviews …, diary entries, written correspondence, and other documents." Predictably, Cohen refused to be interviewed.

Hacker One gets $40 Million in Funding

It is definitely a good time of the year to start thinking vulnerabilities on different web platforms, I just started a new project within regards of publishers and advertisements within this blog, and the information I managed to get is impressive so now while trying to avoid spying software at all cost I will  also do a total clean up and at the same time maximize every single opportunity for publishers and advertisers this idea came right on hand since Hacker One was very busy last year finding vulnerabilities in some of the most sensitive software used by the United States military. The Department of Defense selected HackerOne to run the US federal government’s first bug bounty challenge, Hack the Pentagon. 

             Some valuable stats about this blog Copyright 2017

Over the course of a month, hackers working with the company found 138 vulnerabilities. The challenge cost $150,000 to run and saved the DoD over $1 million, according to former defense secretary Ash Carter.

Next up the DoD also awarded HackerOne a $3 million contract to Hack the US Army. Between November 30th and December 21st, participating security researchers discovered 118 vulnerabilities, the first of which was found in just five minutes.

HackerOne is one of several startups, such as Synack and Bugcrowd, that organize bug bounties and vulnerability disclosures for companies. These bug bounties work by organizing security researchers to find vulnerabilities for HackerOne’s customers; the hackers in turn receive a cash reward from the company.

Today HackerOne announced a Series C financing round of $40 million, which was led by Dragoneer Investment Group. The company will use the funds “to invest further in technology development, expand market reach, and continue to strengthen the world’s largest and most diverse hacker community,” according to a press release. Among HackerOne’s other customers are Adobe, Yahoo, Uber, GitHub, Twitter, Slack, Nintendo, General Motors, Airbnb, and Qualcomm.

“Together we hit harder and the results speak for themselves,” HackerOne CEO Marten Mickos said in a press release. “There’s no such thing as perfect software and bug bounty programs are the most efficient and cost-effective solution for finding security vulnerabilities in live software. With support from Dragoneer we are in the best position to rapidly scale and empower the world to build a safer internet.”

The company currently has more than 100,000 hackers registered to hunt bugs on the platform. So far, they have resolved over 37,000 security vulnerabilities for more than 700 customers. HackerOne’s payouts for hackers are also rather high. So far, the company has awarded over $13 million in bug bounties, $7 million of which was awarded in 2016, according to a press release.

A 2016 study by the Ponemon Institute found that the average consolidated total cost of a data breach is $4 million, while the average cost of a breach in the US is $7 million. Bug bounty programs such as HackerOne have their skeptics, though, with security analysts and even founders of bug bounty startups saying that these programs are by no means a silver bullet for cyber-security issues.

It is now time to see the real results for the future, so if you have a profitable idea on this issue or if you want to publish some valuable information drop me a line or two. Meanwhile let's all be safe!