Cite as: 521 U. S. 642 (1997)
Syllabus
tend beyond conduct encompassed by § 10(b)'s prohibition. See, e. g., Ernst & Ernst v. Hochfelder, 425 U. S. 185, 214. Under the "traditional" or "classical theory" of insider trading liability, a violation of § 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 occurs when a corporate insider trades in his corporation's securities on the basis of material, confidential information he has obtained by reason of his position. Such trading qualifies as a "deceptive device" because there is a relationship of trust and confidence between the corporation's shareholders and the insider that gives rise to a duty to disclose or abstain from trading. Chiarella v. United States, 445 U. S. 222, 228-229. Under the complementary "misappropriation theory" urged by the Government here, a corporate "outsider" violates § 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 when he misappropriates confidential information for securities trading purposes, in breach of a fiduciary duty owed to the source of the information, rather than to the persons with whom he trades. Pp. 650-653. (b) Misappropriation, as just defined, is the proper subject of a § 10(b) charge because it meets the statutory requirement that there be "deceptive" conduct "in connection with" a securities transaction. First, misappropriators deal in deception: A fiduciary who pretends loyalty to the principal while secretly converting the principal's information for personal gain dupes or defrauds the principal. A company's confidential information qualifies as property to which the company has a right of exclusive use; the undisclosed misappropriation of such information constitutes fraud akin to embezzlement. Cf. Carpenter v. United States, 484 U. S. 19, 25-27. Deception through nondisclo-sure is central to liability under the misappropriation theory. The theory is thus consistent with Santa Fe Industries, Inc. v. Green, 430 U. S. 462, 473-476, a decision underscoring that § 10(b) is not an all-purpose breach of fiduciary duty ban, but trains on conduct that is manipulative or deceptive. Conversely, full disclosure forecloses liability: Because the deception essential to the theory involves feigning fidelity to the information's source, if the fiduciary discloses to the source that he plans to trade on the information, there is no "deceptive device" and thus no § 10(b) violation. Second, § 10(b)'s requirement that the misappropriator's deceptive use of information be "in connection with the purchase or sale of [a] security" is satisfied by the misappropriation theory because the fiduciary's fraud is consummated not when he obtains the confidential information, but when, without disclosure to his principal, he uses the information in purchasing or selling securities. The transaction and the breach of duty coincide, even though the person or entity defrauded is not the other party to the trade, but is, instead, the source of the nonpublic information. Because undisclosed trading on the basis of misappropriated, nonpublic information both deceives the source of
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