Well, I've never heard of anyone
getting caught for inside trading
when they BUY,
only when they sell.

And only when you sell publicly traded shares.
If you sell your private company at a high
(suspecting it will soon decrease in value),
you are looked at as a genius.

Basically if you as an exec or owner or buddy of an exec or owner sell,
large fund managers don't sell
and they lose money,
it is insider trading.
If you sell,
large fund managers sell,
and the smaller investor (who gets the information later) loses money,
it isn't.

Yeah, I'm cynical