When I was an analyst, I used build my own network. I’d spot names in magazines where someone was quoted about a company and call them — that’s part of doing fundamental research.

—Dan Chung, CEO, Fred Alger, remarking on how, back in his day, they didn’t rely on expert networks or outside consultants. No, they called people quoted in trade magazines themselves, asked all those probing questions, and walked uphill, in the snow, to school, both ways. Chung is the son-in-law of the gentleman behind the eponymous firm: via Marketwatch

Steve Cohen has had among the highest returns in the industry….Insiders in the business for a long time suspected that his special sources amounted to privileged information. The debate amongst insiders was, “Was the special information on the right side of legality or the wrong side?” But I think it was a pretty common view that it was close to the edge….

When you have somebody who doesn’t appear to have that readily identifiable edge, who nonetheless makes much higher returns than other people, you wonder.

—Sebastian Mallaby, author of More Money Than God. He went on to share that “in the past, successful investors constructed their own expert networks,” just like Dan Chung, which he attributed to the master networking skills of those such as Julian Robertson, when who you knew was the currency, and those that were known were former executives and outside of the circle of those normally considered insiders. So if what Julian did was ok, why won’t Mallaby afford Steve Cohen the same safe-harbor? Is it any different than a service which will connect anyone else to former executives and others outside of the circle of those normally considered insiders? After all, it’s hard to see a difference in kind between what Julian and Steve are described as having done. The interview merely insinuates. It does not specify: via LA Times update – this was also posted as a comment on the LA Times blog-piece, but they seem to have removed it.

The McClellans might have thought that they could conceal their illegal scheme by having close relatives make illegal trades offshore. They were wrong.

—Robert S. Khuzami, enforcement director for the SEC, commenting on a specific insider trading scandal involving the general misbehavior of consultants at Deloitte who misappropriated and tipped material non-public information to trade for their and their relatives benefit: via NYT