Os Suspeitos do Costume ou Vigaristas Encartados. Vejam como roubam no NYSE!!!!

[Koke]

15 Specialists From Big Board Are Indicted
By JENNY ANDERSON

Published: April 13, 2005

Federal prosecutors announced the indictment yesterday of 15 former New York Stock Exchange floor traders, who are charged with cheating customers by mishandling trades to enrich their firms.

The Securities and Exchange Commission also filed securities fraud complaints against the 15 and against 5 other traders, saying they had made thousands of illicit trades from 1999 through 2003. The 20 were specialists - traders on the floor of the exchange who manage activity in particular stocks. The Big Board also settled S.E.C. accusations that it failed to regulate its traders properly.

The joint enforcement action is another black eye for the New York Stock Exchange, which has had scandals in recent years, and comes at a pivotal moment in the exchange's evolution. While the S.E.C. recently endorsed its floor-based system as part of an overhaul of how stocks are traded in the United States, the Big Board was still forced to make some radical changes. A hybrid system allows more electronic trading while maintaining the core floor-based operations.

But a backbone of the New York Stock Exchange is the specialist, a trader who has the obligation to create an orderly market in the stocks he or she supervises.

Critics of the system, often proponents of purely electronic markets, say the human element slows the process, creates conflicts of interest - all the traders buy and sell for their company's account as well as for customer accounts - and is unnecessary, given the technology that is available.

Defenders of the exchange say that because of the large volume of stock that is traded there, it offers better prices with fewer fluctuations while providing the opportunity for human judgment when such judgment is needed. About 1.6 billion shares a day, worth $56 billion, are currently traded on the Big Board.

At its heart, the case again raises the question of whether self-regulatory organizations like the New York Stock Exchange can successfully police themselves. Yesterday's indictments represented the second big floor-trading scandal in recent years. In 1999, the S.E.C. found that the Big Board failed to uncover and halt illegal proprietary trading by a ring of independent floor brokers.

While the Big Board uncovered the original instances of improper trading in this latest case, it failed to follow through, leading to S.E.C. supervision of the investigation. Last year, the S.E.C. brought enforcement actions against seven specialist firms. The firms paid more than $243 million without admitting wrongdoing. The S.E.C. is considering whether to change the self-regulatory model.

Federal regulators say the specialists engaged in two illegal trading schemes: using knowledge of a trade to deal in front of it, and "interpositioning," which occurs when a specialist intervenes in a trade rather than matching buy and sell orders.

The 15 specialists indicted, all but two of whom have left their firms, were members of the New York Stock Exchange's five major specialist trading companies. They are accused of making illegal trading profits from interpositioning of $13.4 million and costing investors more than $19 million from trading for their firms' accounts ahead of customers.

In some instances where, prosecutors said, the traders were cheating customers, they referred to the exchange's electronic order system with an obscenity. Mark Schonfeld, director of the S.E.C.'s Northeast Region office, said the specialists' disregard for their obligations was "profound, and at times profane."

In one case, at 9:41 a.m. on Oct. 2, 2002, the computer of a specialist in General Electric stock indicated that at a price of $25.85, there were orders to buy 39,500 shares and orders to sell 35,000 shares. The specialist, David A. Finnerty of Fleet Specialist, should have matched the 35,000, prosecutors say. Instead he bought 22,700 shares for Fleet's own account at $25.85, then raised the price to $25.95. Just after 9:42, he sold 12,800 shares from the same account, making $1,280 in about 14 seconds.

Regulators say he made $4.3 million in illegal profit and caused $5 million in customer harm

[Camisa]

Há sempre espertalhões em todo o lado, enfim... 

[Waterman]

Como é possível esses senhores ainda não terem um sistema centralizado de negociação?

Penso que apenas por uma razão, que é a mesma de não se usar tecnologia no futebol (na arbitragem):

Convém a alguns!

E fico-me por aqui, um abraço aos dois!

[Camisa]

É o sistema! É o sistema!