Commodity exchange staff may lose trading power

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission will consider this week barring commodity exchange employees from trading certain futures or options. The meeting comes amid widely publicized investigations of possible illegal activity on the stock market following the Ivan Boesky insider trading scandal which broke Nov. 14. The commission meeting is part of a two-year effort by the agency to tighten restrictions on futures trading by people with access to insider, or nonpublic, information.

The commission is expected to bar exchange employees who have access to confidential, market-sensitive information from trading futures or options contracts on that exchange.