2. What else (if anything) would you suggest? In 2011, a federal jury convicted a stock trader who worked for a well-known investment firm, along with two alleged accomplices, of insider trading. According to the indictment, the trader got inside information about pending mergers from lawyers. The lawyers allegedly browsed around their law firm picking up information about corporate deals others in the firm were working on. The lawyers would then allegedly pass their information on to a friend, who in turn passed it on to the trader. Such inside information reportedly helped the trader (and his investment firm) earn millions of dollars. The trader would then allegedly thank the lawyers, for instance, with envelopes filled with cash.

Of course, things like that are not supposed to happen.

Federal and state laws prohibit it. And investment firms have their own compliance procedures to identify and head off, for instance, shady trades. The problem is that controlling such behavior once the firm has someone working for it who may be prone to engage in inside trading isn t easy.

Better to avoid hiring such people in the first place, said one pundit.