Once again, my suspicions have been confirmed. Not that I needed any further proof that market manipulators have an unfair advantage in this rigged game.
But finally a new study finally puts what I've instinctively thought into hard numbers — and the truth is worse than I imagined. It turns out that insider trading takes place in a quarter of all public company deals.
The study conducted by two professors from the Stern School of Business at New York University and a professor from McGill University looked at hundreds of transactions that took place between 1996 and 2012.
The professors examined stock option movements as a way of determining whether unusual activity took place in the 30 days before a deal's announcement and found a whole lot of unusual activity. Random? I think not. The professors said the chances of investors trading correctly ahead of news are literally "about three in a trillion."
The results are persuasive and disturbing. What is worse the study confirms another unconfirmed truth: Regulators and law enforcement are woefully behind, overwhelmed, or inept (or most likely a combination of the three) so they only look for the most egregious examples of insider trading or for prominent targets that can attract headlines (yes, that's you Steven A. Cohen and Raj Rajartnam).
Again, I always thought this but the professors added hard data finding the Securities and Exchange Commission litigated only "about 4.7 percent of the 1,859 M.&A. deals included in our sample." Plus, they found that "it takes the S.E.C., on average, 756 days to publicly announce its first litigation action in a given case.
You would think they were being paid union wages to stretch out a project on that timeline, but nope, they're just on the government payroll.
The major averages rebounded again yesterday. Once again volatility made an appearance early on in the trading sessuon. Ahead of the FOMC announcement today at 1pm Cst, we could see similar actovity. Although I suspect it could be much quieter, I do expect somewhat of a volatile reaction to not only the announcement, but to also the press conference after the announcement. Look for some wild swings to close out the day, and look for the carry over affect into tomorrow.
The world of ETFs have really opened up the retail trader to opportunities that are truly global. Even 10 years ago, how confident could you be making a play on an individual equity in a Chinese company? For one, there were very few even listed on a U.S. exchange. Secondly, how confident could you be in the integrity of the reported earnings and such? Now, with the emergence of the ETF space, we can spread those risks over a portfolio of companies using an ETF such as FXI.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Keep a civil tongue.