Market Efficiency and Insider trading: Evidence from the Egyptian Stock Exchange

Insider trading in securities occurs when a person in possession of nonpublic information about a company trades in the company’s securities. Insider traders enjoy a much favorable position than other non-insider traders because of their possession of such nonpublic information, and as a result insider trading has been a major issue for stock markets, regulators and of course researchers.
In order to avoid problems of information asymmetry all countries have implemented regulations, forcing insiders to provide information concerning selling or buying shares of their firms. Preventing insider trading from taking advantage over other investors is necessary to comply with securities laws.
This paper reviews the existing studies on insider trading, market efficiency, regulation and laws of insider trading, and then it examines the trading activities of insiders in the Egyptian stock exchange. The statistical difference between insider trading and average market returns is then tested.
Results show that differences between insider trading and average market is not significantly different than zero, which encouragingly supports possibility of achieving the strong-form efficiency hypothesis in the Egyptian stock market