A trader’s intent was the central question about an artificial price. It was particularly important for regulators in the egg futures case, because a few years earlier, they had failed to convince a court that they had found a manipulation of the cotton market by the Volkart Brothers firm and a squeeze that generated an artificially high price. In the egg futures case, regulators aimed to rebut this, essentially by showing when and how Henner acted, and when and why he did not, was evidence of intent and therefore evidence of a manipulation to create an artificial price. Demonstrating intent would be the critical stumbling block in proving manipulation in derivatives trading; the complications of these markets and their apparent similarity to the theoretical ideal of free competitive market would also continue to frustrate efforts to define manipulation in statute.