Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Hard

PT148 S2 P3 Q16 Explanation

Insider-Trading

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsAuthor OpinionLaw

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Passage

Passage A Insider-trading law makes it a crime to make stock transactions, or help others make stock transactions, based on information you have ahead of the special position within a company.

However, trading based on information you have that everyone else doesn’t—isn’t this part of the very definition of a functioning stock market? The entire field of stock brokering is based on people gaining knowledge that others don’t have and then using it to profit themselves or their clients. If you analyze a have. That doesn’t make you a criminal; it means you’ve done your homework.

Stock markets work best when all the relevant information about a company is spread as widely as possible, as quickly as possible. Stock prices represent a constantly shifting amalgamation of everyone’s information about and evaluations of a company’s value. It helps when those who to act so that stock prices reflect them.

Someone selling a stock because they know something will happen soon that will lower the stock’s value helps spread the knowledge that the price ought to be dropping. Such actions help ensure that stock prices do reflect a more That’s good for everyone in the stock market.

When contemplating insider-trading law, it helps to consider a far more widespread practice: “insider nontrading”—stock sales or purchases that would have been made, but aren’t because of inside knowledge. This is certainly happening every day, think to lock someone up for it.

Passage B One of the basic principles of the stock market is transparency. In a transparent market, information that influences trading decisions is available to all participants at the same time. Success in the market can then be gained only by skill in analyzing the information and making good investing decisions. In a good investment, and success is based on individual merit and skill.

In insider-trading situations, some people make investment decisions based on information that other people don’t have. People who don’t have access to the inside information can’t make similarly informed investment decisions. That unfairly compromises the market: people with inside information can make informed trade decisions far before other people to earn money in the stock market.

This, in turn, causes a loss of investor confidence and could ultimately destroy the market. People invest in the stock market because they believe they can make money. The whole point of capital investments is to make good investing decisions and make money over time. If investors believe they can’t make money, grow and be successful, and it could ultimately lead to widespread financial repercussions.

What this question is testing

Author Opinion

Your task

Pin down exactly what the question asks about the passage — a detail, the author's view, the structure, or the main point — before looking at the choices.

Common trap

Answers that restate a true detail from the passage but don't answer the specific question being asked.

Winning move

Anticipate the answer in your own words from the passage, then find the choice that matches that prediction.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
16.

The authors would be most likely to

Answer choices

  1. Unsupported Passage A2% picked this

    insider trading tends to undermine investor confidence in the

    Since this is a negative statement about insider trading, we would assume that Passage B would agree and Passage A would disagree. Only Passage B even talks about "investor confidence".

  2. Too Strong: all / all / same27% picked this

    all information should be available to all market participants at the

    This is just too sizzling. It's an unrealistic idea that 100% of information would ever be available to 100% of market participants at exactly the same time. Neither author would insist on this unrealistic standard. The 3rd paragraph of Passage A says, Stock markets work best when all the relevant information about a company is spread as widely as possible, as quickly as possible. That's not saying 100% of information, just relevant stuff. And it's not saying that 100% of market participants should get it simultaneously. It's saying the maximum percentage possible should get it at the fastest rate that's feasible.

  3. Correct66% picked this

    it is appropriate for investors to seek to gain an advantage by

    Why this is right

    This is a very weak claim, so it's easier for any author to agree to it. It also isn't saying something positive or negative about insider trading, so it's easier for these two authors to agree about it. The 2nd and 3rd sentences of Passage A's second paragraph support this: The entire field is based on people gaining knowledge that others don't have and then using it to profit themselves or their clients. The 3rd sentence of Passage B supports this: Success in the market can then be gained only by skill in analyzing the information and making good investing decisions. So both authors think that one of the basic ideas inherent in the stock market is that investors will try to analyze stocks better than other investors in the same market.

    Skill tested: Author Opinion · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

  4. Unsupported Passage B3% picked this

    insider nontrading should be regulated to the same extent as

    Passage A thinks that insider trading and insider nontrading are essentially the same thing, so she would support the idea that they should be regulated to the same extent (preferably regulated very little, since she thinks both are fine). Passage B, meanwhile, does not like insider trading and never mentions insider nontrading. Since we don't know Passage B's position on insider nontrading, we can't support that he would agree with this.

  5. Too Strong: best3% picked this

    insider trading is the best means for disseminating information possessed

    We can't support from either passage the extreme claim that insider trading is the best method for disseminating information. We could also reject this one since it's saying something positive about insider trading, so Passage A would be more likely to agree and Passage B would be more likely to disagree.

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