delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question in this case is whether a person who learns from the confidential documents of one corporation that it is planning an attempt to secure control of a second corporation violates § 10 (b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 if he fails to disclose the impending takeover before trading in the target company’s securities.
I
Petitioner is a printer by trade. In 1975 and 1976, he worked as a “markup man” in the New York composing room of Pandick Press, a financial printer. Among documents that petitioner handled were five announcements of corporate takeover bids. When these documents were delivered to the printer, the identities of the acquiring and target corporations were concealed by blank spaces or false names. The true names were sent to the printer on the night of the final printing.
The petitioner, however, was able to deduce the names of the target companies before the final printing from other information contained in the documents. Without disclosing his knowledge, petitioner purchased stock in the target companies and sold the shares immediately after the takeover attempts were made public.1 By this method, petitioner realized a gain of slightly more than $30,000 in the course of 14 months. Subsequently, the Securities and Exchange Commission (Commission or SEC) began an investigation of his trading activities. In May 1977, petitioner entered into a consent decree with the Commission in which he agreed to return his profits to the sellers of the shares.2 On the same day, he was discharged by Pandick Press.
*225In January 1978, petitioner was indicted on 17 counts of violating § 10 (b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (1934 Act) and SEC Rule 1 Ob-5.3 After petitioner unsuccessfully moved to dismiss the indictment,4 he was brought to trial and convicted on all counts.
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed petitioner’s conviction. 588 F. 2d 1358 (1978). We granted certiorari, 441 U. S. 942 (1979), and we now reverse.
II
Section 10 (b) of the 1934 Act, 48 Stat. 891, 15 U. S. C. § 78j, prohibits the use “in connection with the purchase or sale of any security . . . [of] any manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance in contravention of such rules and regulations as the Commission may prescribe.” Pursuant to this section, the SEC promulgated Rule 10b-5 which provides in pertinent part:5
“It shall be unlawful for any person, directly or indi- • rectly, by the use of any means or instrumentality of interstate commerce, or of the mails or of any facility of any national securities exchange,
*226“(a) To employ any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud, [or]
“(c) To engage in any act, practice, or course of business which operates or would operate as a fraud or deceit upon any person, in connection with the purchase or sale of any security.” 17 CFR § 240.10b-5 (1979).
This case concerns the legal effect of the petitioner’s silence. The District Court’s charge permitted the jury to convict the petitioner if it found that he willfully failed to inform sellers of target company securities that he knew of a forthcoming takeover bid that would make their shares more valuable.6 In order to decide' whether silence in such circumstances violates § 10 (b), it is necessary to review the language and legislative history of that statute as well as its interpretation by the Commission and the federal courts.
Although the starting point of our inquiry is the language of the statute, Ernst & Ernst v. Hochfelder, 425 U. S. 185; 197 (1976), 110 (b) does not state whether silence may constitute a manipulative or deceptive device. Section 10 (b) was designed as a catchall clause to prevent fraudulent practices. 425 U. S., at 202, 206. But neither the legislative history nor the statute itself affords specific guidance for the resolution of this case. When Rule 10b-5 was promulgated in 1942, the SEC did not discuss the possibility that failure to provide information might run afoul of § 10 (b).7
The SEC took an important step in the development of § 10 (b) when it held that a broker-dealer and his firm violated that section by selling securities on the basis of undisclosed information obtained from a director of the issuer corporation who was also a registered representative of the brokerage firm. In Cady, Roberts & Co., 40 S. E. C. 907 *227(1961), the Commission decided that a corporate insider must abstain from trading in the shares of his corporation unless he has first disclosed all material inside information known to him. The obligation to disclose or abstain derives from
“[a]n affirmative duty to disclose material information[, which] has been traditionally imposed on corporate ‘insiders/ particularly officers, directors, or controlling stockholders. We, and the courts have consistently held that insiders must disclose material facts which are known to them by virtue of their position but which are not known to persons with whom they deal and which, if known, would affect their investment judgment.” Id., at 911.
The Commission emphasized that the duty arose from (i) the existence of a relationship affording access to inside information intended to be available only for a corporate purpose, and (ii) the unfairness of allowing a corporate insider to take advantage of that information by trading without disclosure. Id., at 912, and n. 15.8
That the relationship between a corporate insider and the stockholders of his corporation gives rise to a disclosure obligation is not a novel twist of the law. At common law, misrepresentation made for the purpose of inducing reliance *228upon the false statement is fraudulent. But one who fails to disclose material information prior to the consummation of a transaction commits fraud only when he is under a duty to do so. And the duty to disclose arises when one party has information “that the other [party] is entitled to know because of a fiduciary or other similar relation of trust and confidence between them.” 9 In its Cady, Roberts decision, the Commission recognized a relationship of trust and confidence between the shareholders of a corporation and those insiders who have obtained confidential information by reason of their position with that corporation.10 This relationship gives rise to a duty to disclose because of the “necessity of preventing a corporate insider from . . . tak[ing] unfair advantage of the *229uninformed minority stockholders.” Speed v. Transamerica Corp., 99 F. Supp. 808, 829 (Del. 1951).
The federal courts have found violations of § 10 (b) where corporate insiders used undisclosed information for their own benefit. E. g., SEC v. Texas Gulf Sulphur Co., 401 F. 2d 833 (CA2 1968), cert. denied, 404 U. S. 1005 (1971). The cases also have emphasized, in accordance with the common-law rule, that “[t]he party charged with failing to disclose market information must be under a duty to disclose it.” Frigitemp Corp. v. Financial Dynamics Fund, Inc., 524 F. 2d 275, 282 (CA2 1975). Accordingly, a purchaser of stock who has no duty to a prospective seller because he is neither an insider nor a fiduciary has been held to have no obligation to reveal material facts. See General Time Corp. v. Talley Industries, Inc., 403 F. 2d 159, 164 (CA2 1968), cert. denied, 393 U. S. 1026 (1969).11
This Court followed the same approach in Affiliated Ute Citizens v. United States, 406 U. S. 128 (1972). A group of American Indians formed a corporation to manage joint assets derived from tribal holdings. The corporation issued stock to its Indian shareholders and designated, a local bank as its transfer agent. Because of the speculative nature of the corporate assets and the difficulty of ascertaining the true value of a share, the corporation requested the bank to stress to its stockholders the importance of retaining the stock. Id., at 146. Two of the bank’s assistant managers aided the shareholders in disposing of stock which the managers knew was traded in two separate markets — a primary market of *230Indians selling to non-Indians through the bank and a resale market consisting entirely of non-Indians. Indian sellers charged that the assistant managers had violated § 10 (b) and Rule 10b-5 by failing to inform them of the higher prices prevailing in the resale market. The Court recognized that no duty of disclosure would exist if the bank merely had acted as a transfer agent.' But the bank also had assumed a duty to act on behalf of the shareholders, and the Indian sellers had relied upon its personnel when they sold their stock. 406 U. S., at 152. Because these officers of the bank were charged with a responsibility to the shareholders, they could not act as market makers inducing the Indians to sell their stock without disclosing the existence of the more favorable non-Indian market. Id., at 152-153.
Thus, administrative and judicial interpretations have established that silence in connection with the purchase or sale of securities may operate as a fraud actionable under § 10 (b) despite the absence of statutory language or legislative history specifically addressing the legality of nondisclosure. But such liability is premised upon a duty to disclose arising from a relationship of trust and confidence between parties to a transaction. Application of a duty to disclose prior to trading guarantees that corporate insiders, who have an obligation to place the shareholder’s welfare before their own, will not benefit personally through fraudulent use of material, nonpublic information.12
*231III
In this case, the petitioner was convicted of violating § 10 (b) although he was not a corporate insider and he received no confidential information from the target company. Moreover, the “market information” upon which he relied did not concern the earning power or operations of the target company, but only the plans of the acquiring company.13 Petitioner’s use of that information was not a fraud under § 10 (b) unless he was subject to an affirmative duty to disclose it before trading. In this case, the jury instructions failed to specify any such duty. In effect, the trial court instructed the jury that petitioner owed a duty to everyone; to all sellers, indeed, to the market as a whole. The jury simply was told to decide whether petitioner used material, nonpublic information at a time when “he knew other people trading in the securities market did not have access to the same information.” Record 677.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction by holding that “[a]nyone — corporate insider or not — who regularly receives material nonpublic information may not use that information to trade in securities without incurring an affirmative duty to disclose.” 588 F. 2d, at 1365 (emphasis in original). Although the court said that its test would include only persons who regularly receive material, nonpublic information, id., at 1366, its rationale for that limitation is unrelated to the existence of a duty to disclose.14 The Court of *232Appeals, like the trial court, failed to identify a relationship between petitioner and the sellers that could give rise to a duty. Its decision thus rested solely upon its belief that the federal securities laws have “created a system providing equal access to information necessary for reasoned and intelligent investment decisions.” Id., at 1362. The use by anyone of material information not generally available is fraudulent, this theory suggests, because such information gives certain buyers or sellers an unfair advantage over less informed buyers and sellers.
This reasoning suffers from two defects. First, not every instance of financial unfairness constitutes fraudulent activity under § 10 (b). See Santa Fe Industries, Inc. v. Green, 430 U. S. 462, 474-477 (1977). Second, the element required to make silence fraudulent — a duty to disclose — is absent in this case. No duty could arise from petitioner’s relationship with the sellers of the target company’s securities, for petitioner had no prior dealings with them. He was not their agent, he was not a fiduciary, he was not a person in whom the sellers had placed their trust and confidence. He was, in fact, a com-*233píete stranger who dealt with the sellers only through impersonal market transactions.
We cannot affirm petitioner’s conviction without recognizing a general duty between all participants in market transactions to forgo actions based on material, nonpublic information. Formulation of such a broad duty, which departs radically from the established doctrine that duty arises from a specific relationship between two parties, see n. 9, supra, should not be undertaken absent some explicit evidence of congressional intent.
As we have seen, no such evidence emerges from the language or legislative history of § 10 (b). Moreover, neither the Congress nor the Commission ever has adopted a parity-of-information rule. Instead the problems caused by misuse of market information have been addressed by detailed and sophisticated regulation that recognizes when use of market information may not harm operation of the securities markets. For example, the Williams Act15 limits but does not completely prohibit a tender offeror’s purchases of target corporation stock before public announcement of the offer. Congress’ careful action in this and other areas16 contrasts, and *234is in some tension, with the broad rule of liability we are asked to adopt in this case.
Indeed, the theory upon which the petitioner was convicted is at odds with the Commission’s view of § 10 (b) as applied to activity that has the same effect on sellers as the petitioner’s purchases. “Warehousing” takes place when a corporation gives advance notice of its intention to launch a tender offer to institutional investors who then are able to purchase stock in the target company before the tender offer is made public and the price of shares rises.17 In this case, as in warehousing, a buyer of securities purchases stock in a target corporation on the basis of market information which is unknown to the seller. In both of these situations, the seller’s behavior presumably would be altered if he had the nonpublic information. Significantly, however, the Commission has acted to bar warehousing under its authority to regulate tender offers18 after recognizing that action under § 10 (b) would rest on a “somewhat different theory” than that previously used to regulate insider trading as fraudulent activity.19
We see no basis for applying such a new and different theory of liability in this case. As we have emphasized before, the 1934 Act cannot be read “ 'more broadly than its language and the statutory scheme reasonably permit.’ ” Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, 442 U. S. 560, 578 (1979), quoting SEC v. Sloan, 436 U. S. 103, 116 (1978). Section 10 (b) is aptly *235described as a catchall provision, but what it catches must be fraud. When an allegation of fraud is based upon nondisclosure, there can be no fraud absent a duty to speak. We hold that a duty to disclose under § 10 (b) does not arise from the mere possession of nonpublic market information. The contrary result is without support in the legislative history of § 10 (b) and would be inconsistent with the careful plan that Congress has enacted for regulation of the securities markets. Cf. Santa Fe Industries, Inc. v. Green, 430 U. S., at 479.20
IV
In its brief to this Court, the United States offers an alternative theory to support petitioner’s conviction. It argues that petitioner breached a duty to the acquiring corporation when he acted upon information that he obtained by virtue of his position as an employee of a printer employed by the corporation. The breach of this duty is said to support a *236conviction under § 10 (b) for fraud perpetrated -upon both the acquiring corporation and the sellers.
We need not decide whether this theory has merit for it was not submitted to the jury. The jury was told, in the language of Rule 10b-5, that it could convict the petitioner if it concluded that he either (i) employed a device, scheme, or artifice to defraud or (ii) engaged in an act, practice, or course of business which operated or would operate as a fraud or deceit upon any person. Record 681. The trial judge stated that a “scheme to defraud” is a plan to obtain money by trick or deceit and that “a failure by Chiarella to disclose material, non-public information in connection with his purchase of stock would constitute deceit.” Id., at 683. Accordingly, the jury was instructed that the petitioner employed a scheme to defraud if he “did not disclose . . . material nonpublic information in connection with the purchases of the stock.” Id., at 685-686.
Alternatively, the jury was instructed that it could convict if “Chiarella’s alleged conduct of having purchased securities without disclosing material, non-public information would have or did have the effect of operating as a fraud upon a seller.” Id., at 686. The judge earlier had stated that fraud “embraces all the means which human ingenuity can devise and which are resorted to by one individual to gain an advantage over another by false misrepresentation, suggestions or by suppression of the truth.” Id., at 683.
The jury instructions demonstrate that petitioner was convicted merely because of his failure to disclose material, nonpublic information to sellers from whom he bought the stock of target corporations. The jury was not instructed on the nature or elements of a duty owed by petitioner to anyone other than the sellers. Because we cannot affirm a criminal conviction on the basis of a theory not presented to the jury, Revñs v. United States, 401 U. S. 808, 814 (1971), see Dunn v. United States, 442 U. S. 100, 106 (1979), we will not speculate upon whether such a duty exists, whether it has been *237breached, or whether such a breach constitutes a violation of § 10 (b).21
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
Of the five transactions, four involved tender offers and one concerned a merger. 588 F. 2d 1358, 1363, n. 2 (CA2 1978).
SEC v. Chiarella, No. 77 Civ. Action No. 2534 (GLG) (SDNY May 24, 1977).
Section 32 (a) of the 1934 Act sanctions criminal penalties against any person who willfully violates the Act. 15 U. S. C. § 78ff (a) (1976 ed., Supp. II). Petitioner was charged with 17 counts of violating the Act because he had received 17 letters confirming purchase of shares.
450 F. Supp. 95 (SDNY 1978).
Only Rules 10b-5 (a) and (e) are at issue here. Rule 10b-5 (b) provides that it shall be unlawful “[t]o make any untrue statement of a material fact or to omit to state a material fact necessary in order to make the statements made, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading.” 17 CFR §240.10b-5 (b) (1979). The portion of the indictment based on this provision was dismissed because the petitioner made no statements at all in connection with the purchase of stock.
Record 682-683, 686.
See SEC Securities Exchange Act Release No. 3230 (May 21, 1942), 7 Fed. Reg. 3804 (1942).
In Cady, Roberts, the broker-dealer was liable under § 10 (b) because it received nonpublic information from a corporate insider of the issuer. Since the insider could not use the information, neither could the partners in the brokerage firm with which he was associated. The transaction in Cady, Roberts involved sale of stock to persons who previously may not have been shareholders in the corporation. 40 S. E. C., at 913, and n. 21. The Commission embraced the reasoning of Judge Learned Hand that “the director or officer assumed a fiduciary relation to the buyer by the very sale; for it would be a sorry distinction to allow him to use the advantage of his position to induce the buyer into the position of a beneficiary although he was forbidden to do so once the buyer had become one.” Id., at 914, n. 23, quoting Grate v. Claughton, 187 F. 2d 46, 49 (CA2), cert. denied, 341 U. S. 920 (1951).
Restatement (Second) of Torts § 551 (2) (a) (1976). See James & Gray, Misrepresentation — Part II, 37 Md. L. Rev. 488, 523-527 (1978). As regards securities transactions, the American Law Institute recognizes that “silence when there is a duty to . . . speak may be a fraudulent act.” ALI, Federal Securities Code § 262 (b) (Prop. Off. Draft 1978).
See 3 W. Fletcher, Cyclopedia of the Law of Private Corporations §838 (rev. 1975); 3A id., §§ 1168.2, 1171, 1174 ; 3 L. Loss, Securities Regulation 1446-1448 (2d ed. 1961); 6 id., at 3557-3558 (1969 Supp.). See also Brophy v. Cities Service Co., 31 Del. Ch; 241, 70 A. 2d 5 (1949). See generally Note, Rule 10b-5: Elements of a Private Right of Action, 43 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 541, 552-553, and n. 71 (1968); 75 Harv. L. Rev. 1449, 1450 (1962); Daum & Phillips, The Implications of Cady, Roberts, 17 Bus. L. 939, 945 (1962).
The dissent of Mr. Justice BlackmuN suggests that the “special facts” doctrine may be applied to find that silence constitutes fraud where one party has superior information to another. Post, at 247-248. This Court has never so held. In Strong v. Repide, 213 U. S. 419, 431-434 (1909), this Court applied the special-facts doctrine to conclude that a corporate insider had a duty to disclose to a shareholder. In that case, the majority shareholder of a corporation secretly purchased the stock of another shareholder without revealing that the corporation, under the insider's direction, was about to sell corporate assets at a price that would greatly enhance the value of the stock. The decision in Strong v. Repide was premised upon the fiduciary duty between the corporate insider and the shareholder. See Pepper v. Litton, 308 U. S. 295, 307, n. 15 (1939).
See also SEC v. Great American Industries, Inc., 407 F. 2d 453, 460 (CA2 1968), cert. denied, 395 U. S. 920 (1969); Kohler v. Kohler Co., 319 F. 2d 634, 637-638 (CA7 1963); Note, 43 N. Y. U. L. Rev., supra n. 10, at 554; Note, The Regulation of Corporate Tender Offers Under Federal Securities Law: A New Challenge for Rule 10b-5, 33 U. Chi. L. Rev. 359, 373-374 (1966). See generally Note, Civil Liability under Rule X-10b-5, 42 Va. L. Rev. 537, 554-561 (1956).
“Tippees” of corporate insiders have been held liable under § 10 (b) because they have a duty not to profit from the use of inside information that they know is confidential and know or should know came from a corporate insider, Shapiro v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc., 495 F. 2d 228, 237-238 (CA2 1974). The tippee’s obligation has been viewed as arising from his role as a participant after the fact in the insider’s breach of a fiduciary duty. Subcommittees of American Bar Association Section of Corporation, Banking, and Business Law, Comment Letter on Material, Non-Public Information (Oct. 15, 1973), reprinted in BNA, Securities Regulation & Law Report No. 233, pp. D-1, D-2 (Jan. 2, 1974).
See Fleischer, Mundheim, & Murphy, An Initial Inquiry into the Responsibility to Disclose Market Information, 121 U. Pa. L. Rev. 798, 799 (1973).
The Court of Appeals said that its “regular access to market information” test would create a workable rule embracing “those who occupy .. . strategic places in the market mechanism.” 588 F. 2d, at 1365. These considerations are insufficient to support-a duty to disclose. A duty arises from the relationship between parties, see nn. 9 and 10, supra, and *232accompanying text, and not merely from one’s ability to acquire information because of his position in the market.
The Court of Appeals also suggested that the acquiring corporation itself would not be a “market insider” because a tender offeror creates, rather than receives, information and takes a substantial economic risk that its offer will be unsuccessful. 588 F. 2d, at 1366-1367. Again, the Court of Appeals departed from the analysis appropriate to recognition of a duty. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit previously held, in a manner consistent with our analysis here, that a tender offeror does not violate § 10 (b) when it makes preannouncement purchases precisely because there is no relationship between the offeror and the seller:
“We know of no rule of law . . . that a purchaser of stock, who was not an ‘insider’ and had no fiduciary relation to a prospective seller, had any obligation to reveal circumstances that might raise a seller’s demands and thus abort the sale.” General Time Corp. v. Talley Industries, Inc., 403 F. 2d 159, 164 (1968), cert. denied, 393 U. S. 1026 (1969).
Title 15 U. S. C. §78m (d)(1) (1976 ed., Supp. II) permits a tender offeror to purchase 5% of the target company’s stock prior to disclosure of its plan for acquisition.
Section 11 of the 1934 Act generally forbids a member of a national securities exchange from effecting any transaction on the exchange for its own account. 15 U. S. C. § 78k (a)(1). But Congress has specifically exempted specialists from this prohibition — broker-dealers who execute orders for customers trading in a specific corporation’s stock, while at the same time buying and selling that corporation’s stock on their own behalf. § 11 (a) (1) (A), 15 U. S. C. § 78k (a) (1) (A); see S. Rep. No. 94-75, p. 99 (1975); Securities and Exchange Commission, Report of Special Study of Securities Markets, H. R. Doc. No. 95, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 2, pp. 57-58, 76 (1963). See generally S. Robbins, The Securities Markets 191-193 (1966). The exception is based upon Congress’ recognition that specialists contribute to a fair and orderly marketplace at the same time they exploit the informational advantage that comes from their pos*234session of buy and sell orders. H. R. Doc. No. 95, supra, at 78-80. Similar concerns with the functioning of the market prompted Congress to exempt market makers, block positioners, registered odd-lot dealers, bona fide arbitrageurs, and risk arbitrageurs from § ll's general prohibition on member trading. 15 U. S. C. §§ 78k (a) (1) (A)-(D); see S. Rep. No. 94-75, supra, at 99. See also Securities Exchange Act Release No. 34-9950, 38 Fed. Reg. 3902, 3918 (1973).
Fleischer, Mundheim, & Murphy, supra n. 13, at 811-812.
SEC Proposed Rule § 240.14e-3, 44 Fed. Reg. 70352-70355, 70359 (1979).
1 SEC Institutional Investor Study Report, H. R. Doc. No. 92-64, pt. 1, p. xxxii (1971).
Mr. Justice Blacemun’s dissent would establish the following standard for imposing criminal and civil liability under § 10 (b) and Rule 10b-5:
"[P] ersons having access to confidential material information that is not legally available to others generally are prohibited . . . from engaging in schemes to exploit their structural informational advantage through trading in affected securities.” Post, at 251.
This view is not substantially different from the Court of Appeals’ theory that anyone “who regularly receives material. nonpublic information may not use that information to trade in securities without incurring an affirmative duty to disclose,” 588 F. 2d, at 1365, and must be rejected for the reasons stated in Part III. Additionally, a judicial holding that certain undefined activities “generally are prohibited” by § 10 (b) would raise questions whether either criminal or civil defendants would be given fair notice that they have engaged in illegal activity, Cf. Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U. S. 104, 108-109 (1972).
It is worth noting that this is apparently the first case in which criminal liability has been imposed upon a purchaser for § 10 (b) nondisclosure. Petitioner was sentenced to a year in prison, suspended except for one month, and a 5-year term of probation. 588 F. 2d, at 1373, 1378 (Meskill, J., dissenting).
The dissent of The Chief Justice relies upon a single phrase from the jury instructions, which states that the petitioner held a “confidential position” at Pandick Press, to argue that the jury was properly instructed on the theory “that a person who has misappropriated nonpublic information has an absolute duty to disclose that information or to refrain from trading.” Post, at 240. the few words upon which this thesis is based do not explain to the jury the nature and scope of the petitioner’s duty to his employer, the nature and scope of petitioner’s duty, if any, to the acquiring corporation, or the elements of the tort of misappropriation. Nor. do the jury instructions suggest that a “confidential position” is a necessary element of the offense for which petitioner was charged. Thus, we do not believe that a “misappropriation” theory was included in the jury instructions.
The conviction would have to be reversed even if the jury had been instructed that it could convict the petitioner either (1) because of his failure to disclose material, nonpublic information to sellers or (2) because of a breach of a duty to the acquiring corporation. We may not uphold a criminal conviction if it is impossible to ascertain whether the defendant has been punished for noncriminal conduct. United States v. Gallagher, 576 F. 2d 1028, 1046 (CA3 1978); see Leary v. United States, 395 U. S. 6, 31-32 (1969); Stromberg v. California, 283 U. S. 359, 369-370 (1931).