Brooks – Financial Treason & Crime

Ben Bartenstein, 03 April 2021

The market meltdown following Turkey’s central-bank shakeup is reviving a longtime debate among the world’s largest money managers and Ivy League economists over the vulnerability of developing nations.

Doomsayers including Man Group Plc, the world’s biggest publicly listed hedge-fund firm, and the Institute of International Finance’s chief economist Robin Brooks warn that the turmoil battering Turkish securities could ripple across emerging markets in a repeat of the 2013 taper tantrum. Yet that gloomy scenario isn’t the dominant narrative in the hallways of Pacific Investment Management Co., BlackRock Inc. and Ashmore Group Plc, which have some of the largest exposures to the nations that might be next in the crosshairs. Continue reading “Article: Man Group Dials Up Short Bets as Turkey Stirs Fragile Five Fears”

10/30/202003/25/2021

Article: FERC Issues Settlement Order Reaffirming “Gaming” Prohibition in Power Markets

Article - Media, Publications

FERC Issues Settlement Order Reaffirming “Gaming” Prohibition in Power Markets

Michael Brooks, Robert (Bob) Pease, 30 October 2020

Last week the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued an Order Approving Stipulation and Consent Agreement involving High Desert Power Project, LLC (High Desert) and Middle River Power LLC. (Middle River) to resolve allegations of market manipulation in the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) market.

The settlement is noteworthy because it involved allegations of market manipulation that were completely absent of any attempt to influence market prices or to send false signals to the market. This instead is one of the purest examples of FERC taking the position that its market manipulation rule prohibits taking advantage of market design or commitment/dispatch errors (i.e., “gaming”) even when the market is put on notice of the issue. The order should serve as a warning to anybody thinking the current Commission may not embrace this broad theory of manipulation. Continue reading “Article: FERC Issues Settlement Order Reaffirming “Gaming” Prohibition in Power Markets”

05/06/201603/13/2021

Article: SCOTUS Send Merrill Lynch Case to NJ State

Article - Media, Publications

SCOTUS Send Merrill Lynch Case to NJ State

ADAM KLASFELD, 06 May 2016

Merrill Lynch and other brokerage firms must face a state court case that says illegal naked short sales cost investors more than $800 million, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday. The shareholders brought their case four years ago in New Jersey over the Fortune 500 memorabilia company Spectrum Group International, then known as Escala Group. One of the investors, Greg Manning, said “naked short selling” sent his more than 2 million Escala shares into a nosedive. In typical short sales, investors speculate that the price of a stock will decline and purchase securities that they do not currently own in order to profit from the fall. Securities laws and regulations mandate that a short seller borrow the stock it sold and deliver it within four days of sale. Continue reading “Article: SCOTUS Send Merrill Lynch Case to NJ State”

02/06/200705/13/2021

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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