Trading Places

The Year 1909

The first real attempts to curtail insider trading came in 1909. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Strong v. Repide that a director of the Philippine Sugar Estates Development Company committed fraud when he bought stock in his company without sharing pertinent information with the seller that would increase the share’s value.  But it wasn't until the stock market crash of 1929 that the Securities and Exchange Commission was created to improve market oversight and enforcement.