TRADING IN SECURITIES BY DIRECTORS, OFFICERS AND STOCK.HOLDERS: SECTION 16 OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT

The prime objective of the Securities Exchange Act is the establishment and maintenance of a free and open market for trading in securities; a free and open market in the sense that the prices obtaining thereon represent an evaluation of worth based upon a full knowledge in all traders of all pertinent facts and circumstances. In an attempt to achieve a realization of the ideal concept of a free and open market, the framers of the Securities Exchange Act have been careful to bring within the purview of the enactment all elements which they believed in any way were reflected in the market appraisal of traded securities, and to extend the control of the act to all persons who they believed might in any manner influence the evaluation, by the market, of traded securities. Section 16 of the act, while it amounts to a complete unit in itself, is but one cog in this larger scheme devised to control the securities markets of the country.