She happened to be a personal friend of the head honcho of said company.
If you owned $50,000 in let's say, Kodak shares, would you sell them Monday if you got a call over the weekend that the company was going belly-up due to the conversion to digital photography vs. celluoid film?
I anxiously await your answer.
There but for the Grace of God.....
You needn't wait for long.
I would immediately drop a dime on the criminal who passed me that information. I would be meeting with my lawyer that morning. I would be meeting with the SEC that afternoon. And I would be meeting with the FBI that evening.
Although the ethically challenged might perceive a dilemma here, there is really something that easily trumps ethics in cases such as this. That something is a paper trail. You can't take your Kodak (or Imclone) shares down to the corner of Wall and Broad, or sell them on E-Bay. When you sell them, there is going to be a serious paper trail. Even those of us with less than perfect morals will think twice before we perform an act, no matter how lucrative, for which we are very likely to be prosecuted.
If a big bag of money falls off an armored vehicle, a totally honest person will return it no matter what. But, even a dishonest person will think long and hard about keeping the money if he notices that there is a camera at the traffic signal, and it is pointing right at him.
No, not if it was from someone who had inside information, because it is illegal. I would be doing time under the prison if I did what Martha Stewart did. I also wouldn't spend over $1,000,000 for attorneys and another for media consultants. I would go in and tell the truth the first time, like I have always done, each and every time I have ever had to go to court.
Let's put this in perspective. $50k is about .005% of Martha's net worth of about $1B. To make your question apply to us little people, we need to scale your $50k to something that is meaningful.
Assume the average FReeper has a net worth to be $1M. That is 1000 times less than Martha, thus we need to scale your question by 1000. Thus
if you owned $50 in let's say, Kodak shares, would you ...?
Hell no!