These 8 charts are computed from this site's own library of 2117 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.
This library holds 2117 manipulation enforcement actions across 2 agencies. 2026 carries 85 actions against 103 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Every chart above is derived from the same source: 2,117 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.