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Dear SEC: For Your Viewing Pleasure - Obvious Perot Front Running
Dearest SEC, since we know you are infrastructurally and intellectually challenged (in the broadest sense of the word), we have decided to make your life easier. As you likely are not aware, Dell today acquired Perot Systems (we imagine the companies used the attorney-client privilege to avoid disclosing any transaction details to you). All fine and good: here is the link to the 8K should you wish to familiarize yourself with the EDGAR filing system.
Yet something that you may want to consider in your 8 hour daily coffee breaks is the following. We present the option activity in Perot calls last week. Over 2,500 Oct $20 calls were purchased at about $1. The same option is now worth $9.60. The result: an approximately $2.2 million profit in the four days since the accumulation of the options started on September 15 by whoever the party(ies) that were tipped off about this deal. (We are ignoring the $17.50 strikes which also showed suspicious volume early in the month).
As we are well aware that you traditionally are in dire need of visualization aids, we present the charts that make this even more obvious.
And in order to completely connect the dots for you, here are the actual trades that if you care, you can actually dig into, and do some of the fabulous regulatorin' you are so adept at.
September 16th
September 18th
As always, please write us if you need any more calculators, abaci, pencils, erasers, graph paper or staplers to perform the activities that your $900 million budget ill affords you.
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abaci? I didn't know that's what they were called in plural! I learned something new, again!
abacuses is also correct in English.
I have two slide rule objects (calculation engines), what they be called, slaci?
Ill bet the $900 million they don't do a thing
Well reported
You really should send a formal letter to Mary Shapiro exactly as is. I'd be curious to see what the response would be...
Be sure to include some crayons and face paint.
Nice touch...
yea, and some fat pencils.
And, please, save yourself the embarrassment: don't call this frontrunning. This is called insider trading. Just because you've learned a loaded phrase doesn't mean you can apply it indiscriminately (that means "whenever you want" in case that word was too big for you.)
Dude: You make some good points, but your attitude is downright offensive. Do you work as a HFT for GS or something? You defend HFT like it's your freakin' religion, and your logic is flawed. Remember what Greenspan said about derivatives? You're applying the same logic to HFT.
Like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, I rail against ignorance in all its forms. Should a flawed argument in favor of HFT ever grace the pages of ZH, I will counter it just as quickly. If I offend the poster in the process, it is only because I find shame to be a far better teacher than dispassionate statement of fact.
Rock on and continue to shovel toilet paper deep into the gullets of those whose mouths spew shit.
I love your early twenties rookie trader overconfidence. Just to break your arguement. These operations can be BOTH insider trading and front-running.
All front running is a form of insider trading, not all insider trading is front running. (front-running is nothing more than insider trading a client order)
When you take the time to research suspicious market operations and post them for the general community, THEN you will earn the right to wield your flaming sword of semantics self-righteousness.
In this particular case, I'm not making an argument. I'm stating fact. "Insider trading" and "front running" are two very different and unrelated concepts, perpetrated by two very different groups of people. That both groups seek to profit from their respective crimes does not make them the same crime.
"Insider trading" is when a company insider (actually more broadly defined as any person with material non-public information about the company) seeks to profit from that information by anticipating the market's reaction to the news when it eventually becomes public. The criminal in this case is the person with knowledge about the company itself. The "victim" is not obvious, but could be argued to be the market itself, or the specific anonymous participants with whom the insider traded.
"Front running" is when a broker receives a large order from a client and, given that the supply/demand effect of a large order on the market is well-known, decides to trade for himself first, before executing the client's order. The criminal is the broker, who does NOT possess any non-public knowledge about the company but who DOES possess non-public information about imminent market activity in the stock of the company. The victim in this case is quite obviously the broker's client, who receives a worse price for his order only because his broker took advantage of him.
I will stress this again. Insider trading can be committed by anyone with information the rest of the market does not yet know. Front running requires advance knowledge of other market participants' orders - in particular when the perpetrator has been entrusted with the handling of such orders, and has decided to act for himself before revealing the orders to the market.
Not all front running is insider trading. A broker is NOT an insider. A customer order is NOT materal non-public information about a company. I may know nothing non-public about some company, but decide to buy a lot of its stock anyway. My broker may also not know anything non-public about that company, but what he DOES know is that my order will cause the stock to rise. He buys first, then fills my order, then sells after I have pushed up the price. He has committed front running, but not insider trading.
"Semantic self-righteousness," I like that. Nice turn of phrase.
Why doesn't this seriously piss off the head of the SEC? Not from a standpoint of ZH thoroughly and consistently throwing them under the buss, but from a standpoint of pure ineptness. If I were running the show there I would have heads on the chopping block. I'd be thoroughly embarrassed. You'd like to think with their resources they would be on this like stink on ...
It is all so unbelieveable.
It must be somebody "above the law" to do something so blatantly illegal. I'd be curious to find out who.
dunno but betch it sounds like 'foldman fachs'
I have confirmed it. Personally, I would have probably gone with 'abacuses'. What do they call the abacuses that have, like, 8-9 beads on a piece of nylon cord? Is it easier to work out math probelems with that style?
–noun, plural ab⋅a⋅cus⋅es, ab⋅a⋅ci
/?æb??sa?, -?ka?, ??bæka?/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [ab-uh-sahy, -kahy, uh-bak-ahy] Show IPA .
1. a device for making arithmetic calculations, consisting of a frame set with rods on which balls or beads are moved. 2. Architecture. a slab forming the top of the capital of a column.Prayer beads.
Anal beads?
Balls, as in Ben Wa.
From Wikipedia -
It is possible to leave Ben Wa balls in one's vagina all day, or use them while seated in a rocking chair, for an effect that some find pleasurable.
Ms. Schapiro is using them as anal beads, maybe she just needs to be educated on what to do with them.
The SEC will ignore this. They only investigate insider trading when an individual rogue trader does it. When an organization does the insider trading, the SEC views it as standard business practice.
But these trades added liquidity to the market.
And the second derivative went negative a while back ....
They have been using chloroform as an air freshener. We need a new drug czar to clean up this pubic service. (spelling correct)
When are they going to allow private companies to compete for contracts to do the SEC's job... I think it should be obvious they would do better.
Yeah for example, zero hedge on a shoe string (+ BB Terminal cost) budget. I can see the SEC turning into what you see in the famous Gary Larson cartoon.. a suggestion box at the entrance to Hell, and becoming much more effective at mitigating corrupt behavior for it. (i.e., got a tip on fraud? send it to abuse@sec.gov.)
oooooohhh, is THAT what the address is for?
I was using it to email something....more literal
LOL, +1
At least it was an honest mistake.
They are already a suggestion box, but right now it is one that is just painted on the wall, so good luck trying to submit anything.
Well, that all depends on their actual job description, which I believe reads something like this:
Your job will be to screw US taxpayers out of their hard-earned money while protecting the profitability of the highest volume traders and in so doing create the most massive and obvious manipulation in market history. If someone accuses you of not looking out for the little guy, then go roast a few said little guys to prove that you are in fact looking at them, but do not, in any circumstance, make eye contact with anyone from Goldman Sachs.
So the SEC is doing an awesome job! Bravo!
It would be unfair to the shareholders of whoever perpetrated this front-running if we were to prosecute. Therefore we will discharge all related claims. Nothing more to see here - move along... MOVE ALONG!!
PS. the writing of this extensive analysis has just cost you, the taxpayer, $10,000,000 and is therefore a great success for our agency as our record lowest cost investigation. Until now this record was held by our prior success story where we successfuly caught a retired mastermind couple that successfuly swindled their condo association of $534 through an elaborate labirinth of ponzy schemes.
Sincerely,
M.S.
Dear Mary, You are a useless c^nt.
No such thing in a democracy.
Guys chill, it's prolly just a coincidence...again...
Wouldn't it make more sense to contact another regulatory agency, and just CC: Mary? If she is not going to look into this stuff, maybe some other law enforcement agency will. There has got to be some underling of Andrew Cuomo who would like to see their name in the paper for doing the SEC's job when they couldn't. Perhaps this isn't the best example, but the next time you find something open and shut, I would consider goiing with some other agency.
while your at it, check Hank Greenburgs record logs generated by his representative, Edolphus Towns, and the huge bump to Hanks networth, by the good statemans statement today.....wow, political favors DO PAY OFF
While they are at it, they can look into the 75% ramp up in CUR over the last week and a half, then surprise, suprise great news this morning, to pay off all the insiders. Geniuses.
Tattletale....... ;-(
While they are at it, they can look into the 75% ramp in CUR the last week and a half. Today, surpise, surprise, great news, and the insiders lock in profits. GEniuses.
TD...excellent reporting.
President Obama, you should be ashamed of Mary Schapiro as your pick for the SEC.
To: Mary Schapiro...get somebody on this trade NOW. Get the names of the call buyers. Investigate. Prosecute. No more settlements.
Obama is simply the latest Presidential political puppet with the financial elites' (middle) finger up his arse. He is doing what he is told to do, nothing more and nothing less.
The President of the USA has as much power as the military/industrial/banking powers allow the President to have, which are mostly ceremonial in nature.
is this a form of economic stimulus whereas the speculators whom profit can now be able to spend into the economy helping to contribute in their role as a "consumer".
ding ding ding ding
I play tennis with an employee of the SEC. He is a CPA and I know from personal experience, investigates SOME stock fraud cases. When I ask him about certain injustice in the stock market such as front-running, failure to deliver, etc.. He just laughs. He says the new leader Shapiro is better than the last but also says not much has changed. Seems to be very well paid for what he does, although I still haven't figured out what he does after 10 years of knowing this individual. He does not seem well informed on what is happening in the stock market.
Sounds like the perfect SEC employee, overpaid and clueless.
My resume fills out those requirements nicely. Think I have a shot?
Does he know what IS a stock market?
Obama should have named TD as the head of the SEC.
Dear ZH,
Please don't send anymore NSFW pictures to us.
Thank you
SEC
hahaha! +10
Alright, I have a fun little exercise for everyone to partake in.
It is called Visualization Practice.
Today we will all be visualizing Ben Bernanke handcuffed, and being led in/out of a court room. His big bald head is down, the expression no longer one of complete contempt, but more of a "Aw shucks" look to it.
Please continue to visualize this every day with me until the desired effect has been achieved.
We could all imagine ourselves paraphrasing the "Wall Street" line: "I knew this guy was scum from the moment I first laid eyes on him."
I visualize Benny and his comrades swinging from lap-posts everyday. When I get bored with that, I switch over to visualizing them being fed to the guillotines.
I'd gladly cheer knowing that the whole mess of the boys were "swinging from lap-posts", but I surely didn't want to visualize it.
Now if you meant LAMP-posts, that I'll visualize right along with you.
Deckhand
LOL! Yeah, I meant LAMP not LAP.
Forget Schapiro. Stick Cuomo up their arses. That ought to do the trick.
Forget Cuomo. Obama (da Boyz) is going to make sure he is neutralized by making him governor of New York state. If you want to understand how effective that post is look at the record of the last two and the current governor of said state. Actually, you could look at the record of any New York State Governor back to Rockefeller and find the same results.
Yet another example of how the equity markets are worst than Vegas. If Vegas was run like the markets, it would be a ghost town - hey wait, the continually declining volume...maybe we are headed that way.
Open letter to ZH from SEC
Dear ZH,
We received you letter regarding DELL, Perot.
However, we are currently understaffed and have our agents working on a vital case at present. We have heard there is an individual selling unregistered shares in a Time-Share condo, out of his trunk, somewhere in the Brooklyn area. As this is a matter of national security, we will have to pass on the DELL thingy.
Regards,
XXXXXXX
Guys it's all good. I threw a dart on a board at 2pm Friday and it landed on PER, so I bought over 2k of October options for $0.55 that were 10% out of the money in a name that doesn't report until November. I also purposely waited til the very last 2 minutes of the day to get the majority of them. Isn't that how you invest as well?
Nothing to see here, move along.
pshaw, anony, that is nuthin.
I poked in three random letters into the "enter symbol" box of my trading screen...it came up "Invalid Symbol"....
.....and I still made 10% in less than ten minutes.
Gawd Blest America.
Goldman Sachs up again today.
Stock has pretty much gone vertical the last 10 trading days.
No doubt, they profited immensely from the Perot/Dell trade.
Tyler,
Brilliant. Amazing the real press doesn't pick up on very, very simplistic things. My donation is in the mail. Keep up the good work.
That was funny!
Is this the first step to. Dude you're getting your health information stored and made totally public to da government.
TD, on the contrary, we here at the SEC will add this to our website as today's Daily Example of why Uncle Stock Market needs YOU! Without you patriotic hard-working American who each and every day save $2.2-million money out of your paychecks and put it into the stock market for our insider revolving-door friends and family members to steal, they would be unable to treat us to caviar and champagne and to give so generously to their favorite "We Are Better Than Everybody Else" charities.
NOTICE: Call To Arms!
This is Ms. "Taxpayer-Paid" Shapiro's e-mail address: ChairmanOffice@sec.gov
Flood her Inbox with a copy/paste of this post.
Flooding now...wait...message back...
RE:
Go fuck a goat
CONTENT:
Thank you for your e-mail to the Chairman's Office of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Your comments and concerns are very important to us. Unfortunately, because of the large volume of e-mail received, the Chairman can not personally respond to each message. We do read and carefully consider the opinions expressed in all of the e-mails that we receive. Except yours, you're a douchebag so we really don't care what you think.
We deeply appreciate your taking the time to communicate your thoughts and concerns to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now go fuck a goat.
Sincerely,
Mary S. Head
Acting Director
Office of Investor Education and Advocacy
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Might work if the concept of "shame" existed here. Nope - would have to move to Japan/Korea for that.
Schapiro: Who is this Tyler Durdin @$##@#$% and WTF does he mean regulatorin?
Minimum Wage Drone: I think he has something to do with some guy on CNBC named Dennis Kneale.
Visualizing Ben Bernanke in handcuffs:
He is standing before a judge, who glares at him.
Outside protesters call for Bernanke to be deported and stripped of all his wealth, even IF he turns in all the friends he is protecting.
Just sent to SEC:
Isn't is suspect that Perot's options sprang to life just before Dell was said to acquire them?
Boy, I wish I had that information[strikeout] luck.
Saw a ton of this in my days as an equity opts mkt maker. Some $500mm mkt cap drug co that traded 1 or 2k options/month, someone would come in to buy 1k puts. Oh, and they'd have an FDA ruling pending. Hmmmm...
Reported a bunch of these, SEC, or anybody else for that matter, never cared, so I gave up reporting and would just take the hint.
Well done (AGAIN) Tyler.
Unless the rules have changed, it's all legit TD....probably just a loyal, patriotic servant trying to "pick up a few" to avoid having to get a second job....
http://washingtonindependent.com/49636/bill-threatens-congress-shield-from-insider-trading-laws
http://www.securitiesdocket.com/2009/03/11/closing-the-congressional-insider-trading-loophole/
Dear SEC Dildocrat reading this on company time instead of doing your job: F Off A_hole.
I'm sure this is exactly what it appears, I would just point out that Friday was option expiration. Does anyone know what was the open interest in the PER Sep 20 calls? I doubt very much this was just an option roll, just like to dot every i.
OK, for the LAST time now folks - the SEC's job is to actually FACILITATE illegal activities such as frontrunning, etc. for the favored insiders, NOT stop it. How else do you think THUGS and CRIMINALS like Hank Paulson et. al. will retire comfortably on BILLIONS? Are you crazy?
That which is illegal for you or I, is both profitable and acceptable for government officials.
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090921-708841.html
Also mentioned in the WSJ
Hey, it looks like the WSJ desk also reads ZH; though it took them nearly and hour to verify and repost. They could have included a h/t, though...
And a little while later bloomberg catches up
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aXBsHCzOYm4M
So who were the main advisors on this deal?
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley?
No way would I ever question their market ethics.
* Main Entry: an·tic·i·pa·tion
* Pronunciation: \(?)an-?ti-s?-?p?-sh?n\
* Function: noun
* Date: 14th century
1 a : a prior action that takes into account or forestalls a later action b : the act of looking forward; especially : pleasurable expectation
WSJ CALLS IT "ANTICIPATION BY TRADERS"
OR IS IT KNOWLEDGE???
Karl Denninger already harrassed Dell a few weeks back.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/158887-dell-signs-of-insider-trading#com...
Dell crashed hard 3q but they say it was because everyone is delaying purchases to buy winodws 7 systems. Windows 7 is selling like hotcakes through universities for about 30 bucks a shot. So you can look for college kids to be evangalizing it to the grownups who will be asked to fork $200 plus for it.
you know there is a way to run apple osx off of core2duo PCs.
nice little hack that will help you beat both apple & microsoft at their own game at the same time.
just don't buy a dell and you'll be whacking 3 vultures with 1 stone.
Oh ya. hackintoshes are the rage these days. It pretty much destroyed steve jobs liver when the chinese hacked up his precious and started sticking it on nearly everything around. When 10 percent numbers started showing up on internet site statistics it made entire US freak out.
Don't believe any of the piracy blah blah propaganda. It's about this kind of stuff.
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/5/5263/1.html
Takes alot to figure out what all the fights are about. This explains the "browser" fight.
They only interested in high-profile outsiders like Martha Stewart and Mark Cuban.
Mr. Durden,
This seems fishy. I have reported you to fishy@whitehouse.gov.
Respectfully,
chunklyover42
SEC response to complaint about said topic:
RE:
Go fuck a goat
CONTENT:
Thank you for your e-mail to the Chairman's Office of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Your comments and concerns are very important to us. Unfortunately, because of the large volume of e-mail received, the Chairman can not personally respond to each message. We do read and carefully consider the opinions expressed in all of the e-mails that we receive. Except yours, you're a douche bag so we really don't care what you think.
We deeply appreciate your taking the time to communicate your thoughts and concerns to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now go fuck a goat.
Sincerely,
Mary S. Head
Acting Director
Office of Investor Education and Advocacy
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
They all think they're "above the law". Shapiro included. It's disgusting. This lack of regulation can't be a coincidence because it's too widespread. All of the regulators must have been told to lay off. Now, does that help the businesses or us citizens? Duh. No thought has been given to OUR role in all of this (none) & the impact actions (or non-actions) have on US (a lot).
I watched Countrywide's SEC filings for an entire year as it pummeled south. Yeah, the SEC responded to Countrywide's blatant fraud by asking questions.....in writing. Countrywide's written answers were evasive and clearly an attempt to circumvent the truth. All the SEC did was to continue down the path of asking Countrywide pretty basic questions. Never was there any mention of conducting an on-site inquiry - not that it would help the public for the SEC to make an "appointment" to conduct an inquiry. I just happen to know that they like to make "appointments" when justice and the public would be better served if the SEC "dropped in" unannounced. Anything to serve the businesses. All things to screw the public.
If cheese didn't exist, there would be no cheeseburgers.
How does an $8.60 profit on 2,500 options equate to $2.2 million in profit?
re the 8.60 profit on 2,500 options - forget it, forgot the two zeroes on the end, got it now....
Lemme guess CMTA Deutsche Bank? Hahahahahahahahahahahaha you fucking suckers.
Lemme guess CMTA Deutsche Bank? Hahahahahahahahahahahaha you fucking suckers.
Actually, I think the SEC budget for '09 is $914 million. You're off by 14. :) Just sayin'
What do you know?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090923/bs_nm/us_perot_insidertrading_sec_1
This was pretty fast, which is impressive. The SEC was not asleep.
I hope this gets a little attention on this board.
more here: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/092409...