Well, if you work for a financial services company, even if you work in a back office sort of environment like IT -- hell, even if you're a secretary or a netwo

Well, if you work for a financial services company, even if you work in a back office sort of environment like IT -- hell, even if you're a secretary or a network engineer -- you're disallowed from having private brokerage accounts that aren't monitored by the firm. I've worked in several investment firms and banks, and in all cases I had to use a special employee trading account, often at higher cost btw. What happens on such systems are brownouts / blackouts of transactions for certain stocks. It happened to me more than once in the past that, even if I already have a position, I was barred from even selling the security since it was on one of the several lists that they keep. Some of these lists are private, and they won't tell you when it's coming off the list. That's probably part of the protection against insider knowledge, too. Like another commenter said, these coin outlets have a lot more to re-live in terms of wheels that have been invented long ago. Someone talked about currency itself, and Roman experiments, but similar lessons will need to be learned with regards to insider trading, exchanges, securities markets and so forth.