686
Opinion of Thomas, J.
and, if undisclosed, would constitute "embezzlement" of Grand Met's informational property. Under any theory of liability, however, these activities would not violate § 10(b) and, according to the Commission's monetary embezzlement analogy, these possibilities are sufficient to preclude a violation under the misappropriation theory even where the informational property was used for securities trading. That O'Hagan actually did use the information to purchase securities is thus no more significant here than it is in the case of embezzling money used to purchase securities. In both cases the embezzler could have done something else with the property, and hence the Commission's necessary "connection" under the securities laws would not be met.2 If the relevant test under the "in connection with" language is whether the fraudulent act is necessarily tied to a securities transaction, then the misappropriation of confidential information used to trade no more violates § 10(b) than does the misappropriation of funds used to trade. As the Commission concedes that the latter is not covered under its theory, I am at a loss to see how the same theory can coherently be applied to the former.3
2 Indeed, even if O'Hagan or someone else thereafter used the information to trade, the misappropriation would have been complete before the trade and there should be no § 10(b) liability. The most obvious real-world example of this scenario would be if O'Hagan had simply tipped someone else to the information. The mere act of passing the information along would have violated O'Hagan's fiduciary duty and, if undisclosed, would be an "embezzlement" of the confidential information, regardless of whether the tippee later traded on the information.
3 The majority is apparently unimpressed by the example of a misappropriator using embezzled information for personal amusement in a fantasy stock trading game, finding no need for the Commission to "inhibit" such recreational uses. Ante, at 657, n. 8. This argument, of course, misses the point of the example. It is not that such a use does or should violate the securities laws yet is not covered by the Commission's theory; rather, the example shows that the misappropriation of information is not "only" or "inherently" tied to securities trading, and hence the misappropriation
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