Actually, it was recommended to gain physical entry...

...I agree. It also has a framework and guidelines so you can design your own corporations if you are so inclined. This is how I developed the Olympus Group Consortium (of which Aeon Technologies and Aeon Labs are a part) for my campaign settings.

DO NOT buy stock X on margin. Buy stock Y on margin and sell stock X short. This is assuming that the results of the run are going to cause unexpected earnings surprises. Margin is playing with borrowed money so it lets you buy MORE of stock Y (the one that goes up). This is called leveraging your position. Since you know that stock X is going to have a negative surprise you sell it short, which means that you sell the stock without owning any of it (or more than you own) and then buy it back later to cover your position. Of course, to sell short the stock had to be going up in the first place.

You can make a lot of money doing this but you have to keep the trades very small or else do it through some sort of VERY clean brokerage. This is insider trading taken to its ultimate extreme and the Corporate Court and National Exchange would be VERY upset about stuff like this.

Even today, "insider trading" is only illegal in the U.S. and a few other countries. Everyone else considers it fair game. Even in the U.S. the laws are incredibly vague and contradictory.

In dystopian 2070, I'm sure insider trading laws went in the trash heap along with civil liberties and other anti-corporate sentiments.

I'm going to disagree with the assertion that insider trading. Many traders make it a policy to follow insiders and mimic their trades on the assumption that insider trading will be more common than not. When stock is sold be insiders, this erodes the value of the stock, since many others will follow suit. But, when stock is bought by insiders, it greatly increases the value of the stock, because many others will follow suit.

This makes the market far more reliable and predictable than it would be otherwise, by revealing information on future stock value without leaking proprietary details. Reliability and predictability can only increase consumer confidence.

The problems arise when insiders manipulate stock price by making trades that will not benefit them directly on the assumptions that others will follow suit, essentially bluffing to artificially change a stock's value.

Yes they are. They have material nonpublic information (we just stole their prototype and sold it to their rival) which another investor could reasonably want to help make their decision about what to do with the stock. That's the key issue in insider trading arguments.

Would knowledge of this information affect the valuation of the stock?

In Strong Form Market Efficiency like hyzmarca is talking about then the answer to this question is NO. There would be no insider information in a perfectly Strong Form Efficient market since by definition the market would be perfectly adjusted for all historical, public, and non-public information.

How is insider information harmful even if the stock price went up? It isn't--but only if you already held that stock or bought it before its move. So if you are the CFO of a major corporation and the "street" (analysts in the secondary markets) are anticipating sluggish Q3 earnings but you are currently working on those earnings reports and know that they aren't. There'll still be another week before those earning are announced but you go out and buy a ton of stock through hidden means. The street would have your stock undervalued on the anticipation of slow earnings so you buy low. A week later you announce the earnings and the stock soars but the majority of the market doesn't get to act on that info until the stock price jumps up. A few people, the CFO included, make tons of money, but the vast majority make little or no returns. Later it comes to light that the CFO violated the trading rules and goes to jail.

As a participant in the market this erodes your confidence. It would be like playing at a blackjack table that has a sign on it stating "This dealer is a first class card sharp and is cheating you." Would you play at that table? What if the casino said that "We have 10 Blackjack tables and 5 of them are rigged so that you can't win." Would you play at that casino? You have no way of knowing which ones are rigged and which aren't. How confident does that make you in risking your money in that casino?

To take it one step further. Let's say that 5 tables are fair and 5 are rigged so the players always win and that the casino goes into rooms randomly during the night and gives the occupants a tip about which tables are rigged and which aren't. So we know that 5 tables are fair and 5 are rigged. We also know that certain people are aware of which is which. We don't know and now have to pick where to gamble our money. We can assume that the tables that are busiest have all the "insiders" playing at them. Unfortunately, all those tables are full, so all of us "non-insiders" have to go on a wait list until an insider leaves that table. We now have the choice to not play blackjack or to risk our money at one of the non-rigged tables.

Does that analogy help at all? Just because an insider takes an action it doesn't mean that we can get in on it. That means that all the non-insiders, the majority of the market, is playing by a different set of rules and ones that are FAR riskier. As a result less people want to play at the non-rigged tables (invest in the rest of the market) because they know that all the good tables are gone (all the stocks where an arbitrage opportunity exists). As a result the market overall loses liquidity which is what makes a market work.

You can still make money by buying and holding a stock if it is properly priced and a good investment. However arbitrage is where the abnormally high returns are. It is also the abitrageurs who give liquidity to the market as the buy and sell stocks in an attempt to buy low, sell high.

whew that was long winded...

The advantage of using a written contract is that, so long as you remain within the limits prescribed by the Corporate Interaction Accord and are within the spirit of the contract, you are legally indemnified from all civil and criminal penalties relating to your performance of your contracted duties, so long as you are operating within a jurisdiction that recognizes the Accord.

This means that, if you run against Ares and you have a contract with your Johnson's corporation and you don't violate the Accord, then Ares can't prosecute you. Ares can, however, shoot you in the face or disappear you forever.

It also gives you a recourse in case the Johnson double crosses you. Contract courts tend to not enforce handshakes. But, if you have a contract, it is fully enforceable in the event of a double-cross.

You're a crook, not an executive. The question I'd ask is 'will I get caught?' and 'will I make money?'

the probability of getting away with just about *anything* once they have found you and can therefore actually put you into a court of law is rather a moot point.

for one thing, they're probably more likely to just shoot you. for another thing, it would be really hard to prove that they are guilty of insider trading without showing the source of their knowledge, and in this case proving the source of their knowledge most likely includes proving crimes such as breaking and entering, theft, assault, quite possibly murder/manslaughter, illegal possession of weapons/cyberware/software/etc, fraud/identity theft, trespassing, resisting arrest, speeding/reckless driving, assaulting a police officer, smuggling (there's a good chance you brought stuff across some border illegaly after all), vandalism, and probably a dozen other crimes that i can't think of (if not more).

so really, if they can prove you had the insider knowledge as a result of a shadowrun you did, i have to say that the insider trading charge is the least of your worries.

Megamedia Incorporated, for one. They also demand that the shadowruns they contract for be recorded so that they can make movies from the footage.
It's in Queen Euphoria.