Commodities world is extremely different from the securities world. The regulator is the CFTC, not the SEC. I'm not a securities lawyer so I'm not qualified to tell you whether the guy stuck in the gorilla suit would've gone to prison... but I know the rules are very different. http://www.sec.gov/news/testimony/testarchive/1999/tsty1399.txt The disparate treatment of insider trading in the futures arena is another area that raises serious concerns. In contrast to the broad prohibitions against insider trading found in the securities laws, the CFTC's regulations contain a narrow provision that prohibits only a small class of futures industry insiders from trading on non-public material information.[7] The footnote mentions that only employees of the exchanges and "self-regulatory organization" (ie: NFA) are prohibited from trading on non-public information.