The Eddie Murphy trading rule

There are a number of laws out there with strange names, if you have come across the Dodd Frank Act you may have noticed provisions about insider trading in the commodities markets being referred to as the "Eddie Murphy rule".

There's this movie from the 1983 called Trading Places. A key part of the plot is that the people in the movie are involved in commodities trading and wish to use insider information from the government before it's announced to the public.

Here's a good explanation of the trading floor scene that happens at the end of the movie, be warned this contains some spoilers if you haven't seen the movie already.

The crazy bit to me about all this is that the antics in this movie would have been entirely legal at the time that the movie is set in the 1980s. Crazily back then insider trading on misappropriated government reports was actually legal.

Also one other funny thing is on the IMDB website there's this quote about the movie:

A snobbish investor and a wily street con artist find their positions reversed as part of a bet by two callous millionaires.

I love how the "bad guys" here are referred to as "callous millionaires". Clearly there's been a lot of inflation in these last 40 years.