Enforcement data

Name: Market Manipulation enforcement statistics
Creator: Market Manipulation
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

These 8 charts are computed from this site's own library of 3272 market manipulation enforcement actions, rebuilt on every deployment. Each has a stated methodology, an explicit list of what it does not show, and a downloadable CSV that is free to reuse with attribution.

A standing caveat that applies to every chart here. Enforcement data measures enforcement, not conduct. It records manipulation that was detected, charged and announced — which is a different population from manipulation that occurred, in ways that are unknown and unknowable from this data alone. Nothing on these pages should be read as a measure of how much market manipulation there is.

Enforcement actions per year, by agency

This library holds 3272 manipulation enforcement actions across 7 agencies. 2026 carries 137 actions against 199 in 2025, but the most recent year is always incomplete and year-on-year comparisons are dominated by the timing of large multi-defendant sweeps rather than by any underlying trend.

Methodology and caveats · CSV

Monetary relief ordered per year

Aggregate relief is dominated by a small number of very large settlements: in most years, the single largest action accounts for a substantial share of the annual total, which is why the median penalty on each technique page is a better guide to a typical outcome than any yearly total.

Methodology and caveats · CSV

Penalty distribution by technique

Penalty distributions within every technique are heavily right-skewed: the median is far below the mean, and outliers extend well beyond the upper whisker. Any single "typical penalty" figure for a technique is misleading, which is why this site reports medians alongside the spread.

Methodology and caveats · CSV

Criminal parallel share by technique

The likelihood that a manipulation action runs alongside a criminal prosecution varies sharply by technique. Schemes with identifiable individual victims and clear documentary evidence attract criminal attention far more often than order-book conduct, where intent must be inferred from data.

Methodology and caveats · CSV

Asset-class mix over time

Equities remain the largest single category in every year of this data, but the share of actions touching digital assets has grown from negligible to a substantial minority, and a growing number of actions are tagged with more than one asset class.

Methodology and caveats · CSV

Months from filing to recorded resolution

Most actions in this library are recorded as resolved on the same date they are announced, because regulators frequently publish settled matters as a single release rather than filing and settling separately. The distribution therefore describes announcement practice as much as litigation duration.

Methodology and caveats · CSV

SEC trading suspensions per month

Trading suspensions arrive in clusters rather than at a steady rate, because the Commission frequently suspends a batch of related issuers at once. A suspension is a protective measure and alleges no wrongdoing by anyone.

Methodology and caveats · CSV

Venues named most often in manipulation actions

Venue counts measure where enforcement activity is concentrated and where regulators have surveillance reach, not which venues have the most manipulation. A venue that runs good surveillance and refers cases will appear more often, not less.

Methodology and caveats · CSV

The underlying data

Every chart above is derived from the same source: 3,272 structured enforcement records, each linked to the regulator's own release. The whole library is downloadable as a single JSON file, and the methodology behind its compilation is described on the sources page.