These trading restrictions, which exist at every reputable news organization that covers business, are intended to avoid not only conflicts of interest but the appearance of conflicts. If I were to buy a mid-cap stock, write a positive article about the company two days later and sell the stock when it bumped up, I would be doing something that could be legitimately described as insider trading. (Whether a prosecutor would try to make such a case is difficult to know, given the uncertain state of the law.) Even in a more benign situation — when I wrote about a company that was a long-term holding in my portfolio, and didn't sell it afterward — I have still given readers a reason to question my motives.