In cards, stocks and tennis, we can map the system thus:
1. Decision about action is made
(Firm decides on merger during board meeting/Roddick decides to serve a topspin/Dealer decides to deal in alternating order)
2. Action occurs
(Firm announces in press release/Roddick serves/Dealer deals)
3. An observer relays info about action
(Stock trader instantly reports shares beginning to soar/Courtsider pushes button for "it's a topspin" and potentially "point scored"/Card-counter relays number of cards in dealer's hand to player or himself)
Insider trading is when a person who was present at step 1 performs step 3 (relays information) ahead of step 2 (Action).
The analog in tennis would be if Roddick (insider to his own playing) told someone he would serve a topspin prior to serving it, or worse, if Roddick told someone he would lose a match on purpose.
Courtsiders, unlike a typical inside trader, have no special inside knowledge about what kind of serves a player shall make, and they certainly cannot influence a player's playing. Just like a stock trader, their only power is transmitting the events that do occur at lightning speed.
Rapidly counting the number of cards in a hand after they've been dealt (action) is this, too.
As you can see, insider trading is the wrong analogy to make.
I would disagree that it's the "wrong" analogy to make... maybe just different.
To me, insider trading is analogous to court siding, in that, in both cases, someone is seeking to use "private information" (information that isn't yet publicly available) in order to make money. So I would order the system:
1. Action occurs "privately" (firm decides on merger but hasn't announced it publicly; court sider reports data that the ump hasn't recorded yet/doesn't record; player notices how dealer plays the cards)
2. Party with the private information makes bets based on this information in an effort to beat the system
3. The public finds out about the previously private information and responds accordingly.
So, courtsiders don't have knowledge about what the player WILL do, but they can tell people what the HAS done faster than they would get normally.
Though I can understand how card counting may be a better analogy for courtsiding simply because of the fact that they're both legal gray areas, as opposed to insider trading, which is explicitly illegal.
The extent I could agree with it largely depends on how well this step - "courtsider reports [private] data that ump hasn't recorded/doesn't record" - represents the real game.
I would think the courtsider and ump record scores at an almost equal pace (and the advantage a courtsider might get from guessing a score ahead of the ump by a few milliseconds is likely negated by wrong guesses). But the stuff the umpire "doesn't record," like a player's injury, can be seen by every attendant of that match.
If the injury (or some other event the ump doesn't record) is seen by most of the stadium, isn't it more "public knowledge" than "private information"? If so, then courtsiding isn't like insider trading. If the stadium full of people counts as a "private" party, then it is.
1. Decision about action is made (Firm decides on merger during board meeting/Roddick decides to serve a topspin/Dealer decides to deal in alternating order)
2. Action occurs (Firm announces in press release/Roddick serves/Dealer deals)
3. An observer relays info about action (Stock trader instantly reports shares beginning to soar/Courtsider pushes button for "it's a topspin" and potentially "point scored"/Card-counter relays number of cards in dealer's hand to player or himself)
Insider trading is when a person who was present at step 1 performs step 3 (relays information) ahead of step 2 (Action). The analog in tennis would be if Roddick (insider to his own playing) told someone he would serve a topspin prior to serving it, or worse, if Roddick told someone he would lose a match on purpose.
Courtsiders, unlike a typical inside trader, have no special inside knowledge about what kind of serves a player shall make, and they certainly cannot influence a player's playing. Just like a stock trader, their only power is transmitting the events that do occur at lightning speed. Rapidly counting the number of cards in a hand after they've been dealt (action) is this, too.
As you can see, insider trading is the wrong analogy to make.