From Trading Places to war markets: how insider trading slipped into prediction platforms

In the 1983 film Trading Places, two wealthy brothers set out to rig the commodities market by getting their hands on a secret government crop report. Eddie Murphy’s character uses that stolen preview to trade ahead of everyone else and cash in big. Moviegoers were meant to see it as brazen and clearly illegal. Except it wasn’t.

“People were surprised to learn that that wasn’t a crime,” said Peter Sanchez Guarda, who spent 22 years at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission before leaving in late 2024 and starting up Turnkey Family Office.

just to be clear, prediction markets made gambling on war a spectator sport in relatively short order. who knows how much of that was 'insider' trading

half a billion dollars in trading volume as of yesterday pic.twitter.com/Z5u72B22Ik