By Martina Rejsjo, Director of Regulatory Affairs, Eventus The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently filed a civil enforcement lawsuit against an individual for an alleged fraudulent scheme to inflate the value of a private hedge fund by manipulating the price of the fund’s single largest holding, a thinly-traded equity. The individual was the …
Marking the Close – Inflating a Fund’s Valuation Read More »
By: Chris Waitz, Director of Regulatory Affairs, Eventus The CFTC recently released its annual report on enforcement results. The report summarizes the enforcement action taken over the previous year and provides insight into the areas of focus for the agency. This year’s report demonstrates the CFTC’s continued commitment to protecting customers and ensuring market …
By: Joseph Schifano, Global Head of Regulatory Affairs, Eventus FINRA recently alerted members to an emerging threat: “pump-and-dump-like” schemes against thinly-traded initial public offerings (IPOs). The behavior that FINRA, NASDAQ, and NYSE have all observed includes a bad actor manipulating the price of a small-cap IPO to inflate the price (pump) and then profit …
Pig-Butchering, Evolving Schemes and Surveillance Read More »
By: Martin Appiah, Director of Regulatory Affairs, EMEA, Eventus In the final report on the MAR Review, published on the 24th September 2020, ESMA acknowledged that there are fundamentally different views on pre-hedging. As a follow-up to the MAR Review, ESMA is therefore undertaking an analysis of that practice in the market and on …
By: Chris Montagnino, Director of Regulatory Affairs, Eventus Recently, a broker-dealer was faced with an $850,000 fine from FINRA and a significant undertaking to hire an independent consultant for failures in the supervision of their surveillance and AML processes. The Firm did not have procedures to monitor for potentially manipulative trading, as well as …
By: Chris Montagnino, Director of Regulatory Affairs, Eventus The year 2022 has been dominated by a high number of traditional insider trading actions brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The number of such cases has well exceeded the number of similar cases filed in 2020 and 2021. Cases range from corporate insiders trading while …
Classic Insider Trading Cases Come Roaring Back in 2022 Read More »
By: Chris Waitz, Director of Regulatory Affairs, Eventus In recent enforcement action, The CFTC charged one trader and fined two other traders and one proprietary trading firm for spoofing violations. The two traders and the firm received fines totaling $850,000 and the traders also received trading suspensions of four months and six months. While these …
Considerations for Spoofing Detection – Proving Intent Read More »
By: Chris Waitz, Director of Regulatory Affairs, Eventus Two US Futures Commision Merchants (“FCMs”) recently paid fines totaling $120,000 to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (“CME”) and the Chicago Board of Trade (“CBOT”) for submitting orders which adversely impacted the exchanges’ Indicative Opening Price. CME and CBOT Rule 573 (“Globex Opening”) states that prior to the …
CME Enforcement Action: Indicative Opening Price (IOP) Violations Read More »
By: Chris Montagnino, Directory of Regulatory Affairs, Eventus Two recent enforcement actions serve as reminders of the importance of having appropriate supervision and monitoring relating to short sales. In each matter, the firm incurred violations of SEC Regulation SHO (“Reg SHO”) and paid a six figure fine as a result of the missteps. SEC Rule …
Firms Still Experiencing Pains from Failures Related to Short Selling Read More »
By Martina Rejsjo, Director of Regulatory Affairs, Eventus A recent article published by Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS) has highlighted the ongoing debate around algorithmic trading (algo trading) and increased market volatility in the Energy market. Natural gas and electricity markets are physical markets and volatility is typically driven by market-relevant news. However, more recently, …
