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Article: Bloomberg TV Examines ‘Phantom Shares’ in Special Report Tonight

Article - Media, Publications

Bloomberg TV Examines ‘Phantom Shares’ in Special Report Tonight

Bloomberg , 13 March 2007

NEW YORK, March 13 /PRNewswire/ — Tonight BLOOMBERG TELEVISION(R) examines a little-known stock trading practice that can be affecting your portfolio and your company. The special report, titled “Phantom Shares,” explores the problem of “naked shorting” in the stock market. The half-hour BLOOMBERG TELEVISION program is scheduled to air on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 7:00, 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. ET.

Every day, millions of shares of stock are sold but can’t be delivered because of an obscure trading practice called “naked short selling.” In a normal short sale, an investor borrows shares and sells them, making a profit if the price falls by replacing the borrowed shares with cheaper ones. In a naked short sale, an investor doesn’t borrow the shares, but sells them anyway. In extreme cases, the investor sells “Phantom Shares,” shares that don’t exist. The BLOOMBERG TELEVISION report, anchored by Mike Schneider, explains this practice, how it’s executed and what the Securities and Exchange Commission is doing in an effort to control it. Continue reading “Article: Bloomberg TV Examines ‘Phantom Shares’ in Special Report Tonight”

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Article: Naked and Confused

Article - Media

Naked and Confused

Liz Moyer

Forbes, 12 February 2007

How a tiny software outfit fell victim to an illegal but unrestrained practice known as naked short-selling.

Most investors have never heard of Sedona (otcbb: SDNA.OB – news – people ) Corp., a piddling Pennsylvania outfit that sells customer relationship management software for small U.S. banks and credit unions. But to a rogue band of short-selling hedge fund managers, Sedona was prime meat.

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Article: SEC is Looking at Stock Trading

Article - Media

Article: SEC is Looking at Stock Trading

Jenny Anderson

New York Times, 6 February 2007

The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun a broad examination into whether Wall Street bank employees are leaking information about big trades to favored clients, like hedge funds, in an effort to curry favor with those clients, executives at Wall Street banks said.

The inquiry, these people said, seems aimed at determining how pervasive insider trading, or the illegal use of market-moving nonpublic information, may be on Wall Street. Knowledge about a large trade, like the sale of a big block of stock by the mutual fund giant Fidelity, would tell a trader which way the stock would move.

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Media: Liz Moyer

Media

Liz Moyer is CNBC digital Investing Editor, after a varied career as an editor with The New York Times (2015-2017), reporter with the Wall Street Journal (2013-2015), reporter with Dow Jones Newswires (2010-2013), senior writer with Forbes (2005-2010), editor and reporter with American Banker (1996-2005), and reporter with Thomson Financial (1994-1996).

She earned an MS in Journalism from Columbia (1991) and a BS in Diplomacy from Georgetown (1989).

Muck Rack / Liz Moyer

LinkedIn / Liz Moyer

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Article: Pay No Attention to That Crazy Man on TV

Article - Media, Publications

Pay No Attention to That Crazy Man on TV

Henry Blodget, Slate, 29 January 2007

It would be impossible to write a “Bad Advice” column about investing without discussing Jim Cramer. I have been through several stages of feelings about Cramer. My initial belief was that the former hedge-fund manager, host of CNBC’s hit show Mad Money, and author of several books about speculating was perhaps the worst thing to happen to the financial security of average Americans since the crumbling of the Social Security system. I developed this theory in the early Mad Money days, when Cramer’s stock-picking track record—if on-air shouts, blurts, and Tourette’s-style tics can ever be called a “record,” which, in a serious context, they obviously can’t—remained close enough to market averages that Cramer was not laughed out of town when he suggested with a straight face that he was giving good advice.

Continue reading “Article: Pay No Attention to That Crazy Man on TV”

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Article: Flames Flare Over Naked Shorts

Article - Media

Flames Flare Over Naked Shorts

Dan Mitchell

New York Times, 20 January 2007

UNSUSPECTING readers of certain stock message boards may be forgiven for believing they have stumbled into a flame war among 14-year-old boys. But the increasingly vicious online dispute actually involves, among others, the chief executive of a publicly traded corporation and a longtime business journalist.

The chief executive is Patrick Byrne, who in recent years has taken to asserting that a vast conspiracy of securities traders, journalists and government officials is bent on bringing down the stock of his company, Overstock.com, a peddler of excess inventory. The journalist is Gary Weiss, the author and former BusinessWeek reporter who has made a second career out of ridiculing Mr. Byrne on his blog (garyweiss.blogspot.com).

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Letter: To SEC from Dave Patch on Tick Test

Letter

January 12, 2007

Ms. Nancy M. Moms Securities and Exchange Commission 100F Street, NE Washington D. C., 20549-1090

As a follow-up to my previous memo regarding this proposal to eliminate the tick test/ price test, I would like to further emphasize the concerns the public has with regards to the regulations of market making activities as they pertain to this proposed and all other short sale regulations.

Continue reading “Letter: To SEC from Dave Patch on Tick Test”

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Paper: The Deep Capture Story by Mark Mitchell

Paper

The Story of Deep Capture

By Mark Mitchell, with reporting by the Deep Capture Team

The Columbia School of Journalism is our nation’s finest. They grant the Pulitzer Prize, and their journal, The Columbia Journalism Review, is the profession’s gold standard. CJR reporters are high priests of a decaying temple, tending a flame in a land going dark. In 2006 a CJR editor (a seasoned journalist formerly with Time magazine in Asia, The Wall Street Journal Europe, and The Far Eastern Economic Review) called me to discuss suspicions he was forming about the US financial media. I gave him leads but warned, “Chasing this will take you down a rabbit hole with no bottom.” For months he pursued his story against pressure and threats he once described as, “something out of a Hollywood B movie, but unlike the movies, the evil corporations fighting the journalist are not thugs burying toxic waste, they are Wall Street and the financial media itself.” His exposé reveals a circle of corruption enclosing venerable Wall Street banks, shady offshore financiers, and suspiciously compliant reporters at The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, CNBC, and The New York Times. If you ever wonder how reporters react when a journalist investigates them (answer: like white-collar crooks they dodge interviews, lie, and hide behind lawyers), or if financial corruption interests you, then this is for you. It makes Grisham read like a book of bedtime stories, and exposes a scandal that may make Enron look like an afternoon tea.

Introduction By Patrick M. Byrne, Deep Capture Reporter

PDF (69 Pages): Deep Capture Story

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Article: Whisleblower Vindicated Massive Trading Firm Knight Capital Charged With Abusing “Naked Shorts”

Article - Media

Whisleblower Vindicated: Massive Trading Firm Knight Capital Charged With Abusing “Naked Shorts”

David Dayen

The Intercept, 15 December 2016

Back in September, I wrote a seven-part series at The Intercept chronicling how former Wall Street trader Chris DiIorio, determined to figure out how he lost a small fortune on a penny stock, came to the conclusion that gigantic market-making firm Knight Capital, now known as KCG, repeatedly violated federal regulations meant to prevent abuse in what are known as “naked short sales.”

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Article: Naked Short Selling – How Exposed Are Investors?

Article - Academic

Naked Short Selling: How Exposed are Investors?

James W. Christian, Robert Shapiro, John-Paul Whalen

The Houston Law Review, 10 November 2006

Regulation SHO is a start, but in order to guarantee a fair market place, the SEC must close the loopholes in Regulation SHO and institute comprehensive reforms to the clearing and settlement system. Until the SEC makes these necessary reforms and addresses the DTCC’s mismanagement of the Stock Borrow Program, investors will continue to be exposed to the manipulative potential of naked short selling.

PDF (58 Pages):  HLR Naked Short Selling 2006-11-10

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Article: SEC Will Be Investigated in Probe Sought by Senate’s Grassley

Article - Media

SEC Will Be Investigated in Probe Sought by Senate’s Grassley

Otis Bilodeau

Bloomberg via Wayback, 26 October 2006

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, already under scrutiny for its handling of a trading probe that entangled Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer John Mack, now faces a broad review by government auditors of its management and methods for policing the financial markets.

The Government Accountability Office agreed last week to investigate the SEC’s enforcement division and compliance department after requests by Senator Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican who questioned whether the agency gave Mack special treatment. Grassley asked the GAO to examine the SEC’s “planning, oversight, control and other management processes” and gauge whether the agency does enough to oversee regulators at the New York Stock Exchange and NASD.

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Web: SEC To Be Investigated By GAO

Web

SEC To Be Investigated By GAO

Bob O’Brien

Bloomberg cited by Sanity Check via Wayback, 26 October 2006

Well, for those who felt that the SEC would continually get away with murder, operating like a fiefdom above accountability to anyone, free to ignore the basics of due process, the rule of law, responsible regulation, etc….News Flash!

The SEC is going to be subjected to the scrutiny of the GAO.

Access archived page.

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Article: S.E.C. Inquiry on Hedge Fund Draws Scrutiny

Article - Media

S.E.C. Inquiry on Hedge Fund Draws Scrutiny

Walt Bogdanich, Gretchen Morgenson

New York Times, 22 October 2006

By the evening of June 20, 2005, the government’s investigation of possible insider trading by Pequot Capital Management, a prominent hedge fund, had reached a critical stage.

Throughout the day, Robert Hanson, a branch chief in the Washington office of the Securities and Exchange Commission, had been questioning his lead investigator in the case about taking the testimony of John J. Mack, an influential Wall Street executive.

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Article: Outcry grows over naked short sales

Article - Media

Outcry grows over naked short sales

Will Shanley

The Denver Post, 14 October 2006

It began as Pederson watched words appear on her computer screen at her Arvada home office. Investors, writing via an Internet chat room, were touting a mining company called CMKM Diamonds Inc.

The Las Vegas-based company, the investors claimed, owned mineral rights to more than a million acres of diamond-rich land in Saskatchewan, Canada. Intrigued, Pederson bought shares worth $15,000.

The decision began Pederson’s involvement in a saga that includes lawsuits, huge financial losses and allegations of fraud on Wall Street and inaction by federal regulators.

Read full article.