Hey Wayne.
With regard to channel checks, I think there are probably folks out there who undertake that sort of thing.
As for whether doing so is legit, I'd personally steer far clear of it. I think the last phrase I'd use to describe such a practice would be "[o]bviously A-Okay."
As insider trading laws have touched the activities (and lives) of printers, garbage handlers, attorneys, and other folks whose livelihoods are distant from the securities industry...but who by virtue of their positions or the information they come across become de facto insiders, it seems perilous.
In addition, I believe the two insider trading buzzwords - material (to describe the information, which it certainly would be) and nonpublic - seem to fit the type of information a supplier might have, especially where it specifically applies to a publicly traded, inventory-sensitive client, quite well.
I'm also sure that many companies have confidentiality agreements in place to guard against just that type of snooping. And, where they don't - and where there is jurisdiction - though I'm not an attorney, I'd bet that Uniform Commerical Codes (UCC) apply, making the passage of this sort of information potentially actionable vs. the distributor/supplier as having violated an implied contract contemplated by the existence of a purchaser-seller relationship, and also vs. the information seeker as having tortiously interfered in a contract.
LP. |
