Trading Places (1983)

Billy Ray Valentine and Louis Winthorpe III (Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd, respectively) commit one of the grandest and most plainly obvious acts of insider trading ever seen, in John Landis’s Christmas classic Trading Places. They do so to overthrow and bring low the Duke Brothers, Randolph and Mortimer (veteran actors Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche), in retaliation for the Brothers’ own machinations and upending both Valentine and Winthorpe’s lives as part of a petty bet. What’s crazy about their crime is that their specific type of insider trading wasn’t explicitly on the books as illegal until 30 years after the film was released. The “Eddie Murphy Rule”, introduced as part of the Dodd-Frank financial sector reforms in 2010, dealt with the exact scheme: Valentine and Winthorpe intercept an unreleased crop report that, upon release, would cause the trading market for frozen orange juice to explode. They replace the real report for a far bleaker one, and use their ill-gotten knowledge to undercut trading by significant margins, allowing them to corner the market while also causing the Duke Brothers’ seats on the commodities exchange to be put for auction to cover their loss margins when they overbuy the commodity.

- Sean Beattie