Atkins: SEC watching for 'hanky-panky' in markets even as shutdown drags on

[President Trump Takes Part In Swearing-In Ceremony For Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins]

The Securities and Exchange Commission continues to watch for any manipulative activity in financial markets during the ongoing government shutdown, its chair Paul Atkins told _CNBC _in an interview.

"Even during the shutdown, as we conduct our surveillance on the marketplace, we have stopped trading on eight foreign companies on Nasdaq that showed indicia of manipulative behavior - ramp and dump, we call it," Atkins said.

"So we are monitoring the market for the behavior that indicates, you know, hanky-panky going on in the marketplace," he added.

Atkins said the SEC is on the lookout for suspicious trading activity, such as a sudden inexplicable ramp up in stock prices despite no news, or anomalous trading around company announcements that indicate potential insider trading.

"We have a lot of different tools that we can use to analyze this, and we work closely with the self-regulatory organizations, the exchanges and so forth, because they are the immediate ones looking at their markets and doing surveillance over that," he added.

Atkins said [https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/10/22/watch-cnbcas-full-interview-with-sec-chairman-paul-atkins.html] the government shutdown has impacted the SEC's work, including reviewing IPO registration statements and working on proposals for cryptocurrency legislation.

Around 400 SEC employees are working during the shutdown [https://seekingalpha.com/news/4506531-us-government-shutdown-now-second-longest-in-history], out of the more than 4,000 employed by the agency.

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