Why Not Insider Trade on Every Company?

So one way to insider trade is, you work at a bank, and you advise on mergers, and before a merger happens you meet a guy and write the name of the target on a napkin, and the guy reads the napkin, and then he eats it, and then he buys stock in the target, and he makes money, and then you meet in a parking lot and he hands you a bag of cash representing your cut of his profits.1439310805169 There are a lot of variations, many involving golf, but that's the basic structure. You get your news one piece at a time, from a place where you work, and then you pass it on to someone who doesn't work there to cover your tracks.

That is pretty laborious. If you are an insider at a company, you can only really insider trade in your company, and the companies it is thinking of buying. If you work at a bank or law firm or financial printer, you have more opportunities, but you are still somewhat constrained.1439304895530 This seems to drive a lot of the demand for leverage in insider trading: It's risky, and you only get a handful of opportunities, so you have to make sure that they pay off big. So instead of buying stock in the merger target for a 20 percent return, you buy short-dated out-of-the-money call options on the target and make a 1,000 percent return. And then you get caught, because the Securities and Exchange Commission knows to look at the options.