More than two months later and shareholders have not received the proposed preferred shares.
The companyâs preferred shares that traded under MMTLP have been deleted as part of the highly anticipated Next Bridge Hydrocarbons spinoff.
Before that, on Dec. 9, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) halted trading ahead of the final day on the market for MMTLP stock.
Next Bridge Hydrocarbons is not a publicly traded company, despite being spun off from one.
Investors who held MMTLP stock on Dec. 13 were expecting to receive shares of the private company.
Next Bridge Hydrocarbons on MMTLP Halt
Market News: Next Bridge Hydrocarbons stock news and updates.
Next Bridge Hydrocarbons released the following statement regarding the MMTLP halt.
“We recognize that some of our shareholders who owned Metaâs Series A Non-Voting Preferred Stock prior to the Spin-Off might have been affected by FINRAâs halting of the trading in that stock while the Company was still wholly owned and controlled by Meta.
The current board and officers of the Company have no information from FINRA regarding the Trading Halt other than the information in the public notice published by FINRA announcing the Trading Halt.
Further, FINRA did not provide any advance notice to the Company or Meta prior to its initiating the Trading Halt.
While we were not involved in the Trading Halt, we certainly empathize with anyone adversely affected by the Trading Halt and are assessing the matter.
The Company believes that our primary means of delivering shareholder value is to develop our interests in the Orogrande Basin, and we remain focused on this objective.”
In regard to what happened to shares of Next Bridge, the company said the following:
“AST has distributed all shares of our common stock related to the Spin-Off âeither directly to any stockholders that held their shares directly registered with AST or to our shareholdersâ bank, broker or nominee representatives.”
About Next Bridge Hydrocarbons
The Company is an independent public reporting energy company engaged in the acquisition, exploration, exploitation and/or development of oil and natural gas properties in the United States. Our primary focus has been the development of interests in an oil and gas project consisting of 134,000 contiguous gross acres we hold in the Orogrande Basin in West Texas in Hudspeth County, Texas. In addition, we have minor interests in the Eastern edge of the Midland Basin in Texas, and two minor well interests in Oklahoma. Please visit www.nextbridgehydrocarbons.comfor more information.
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Market News Today: The SEC green-lighted naked shorting in 2015.
Forbes published a piece surrounding Uber’s ‘troubled’ IPO stating that the SEC green-lighted naked shorting of IPOs in 2015.
“A curious thing happened during Uberâs troubled initial public offering last week: naked short selling of UBER shares by the banks involved in placing Uberâs IPO, according to several sources who confirmed this to CNBC.
But it was legal in this case, and it gave the banks a chance to profit–as investors lost money–when the IPO traded down 18% in its first two days.
Naked-shorting of IPOs by banks, which the SEC green-lighted as recently as 2015, has changed IPO market dynamics by altering the relative power between banks, issuers and investors.Â
To the detriment of investors, banks now have less fear of incurring major losses from pricing an IPO too high because banks now have a tool (naked shorting) to protect their downside risk.”
Forbes said that thanks to the SECâs explicit statement allowing naked shorting during IPOs, banks have a chance to win regardless of what the IPO is priced at, a fear they had prior to getting the green light on naked shorting.
In a space call with Genius Group ($GNS) CEO Roger Hamilton, a user had stepped up to question the proof of naked shorting discussed about in sort of media or case.
As you can imagine, speakers on the panel were quick to give the user the information they lacked to research in the first place.
But it’s there, and this is just one case on the proof of naked shorting in the market.
GNS Shares Plummet After IPO
2023 GNS #NakedShortsWar.
Genius Group CEO Roger Hamilton said he suspected naked shorting was happening in his company stock after shares had gradually plunged after their IPO date.
Roger Hamilton has been leading the fight against naked shorts by not only raising awareness on social media but also by taking legal action.
The company just launched phase 2 of their legal battle against naked short selling.
One of the topics discussed in the space call with Roger was of dual listing using the blockchain.
My thoughts on the blockchain are that it provided accountability and less stress on investors when dealing with manipulative shorting tactics.
It’s still a very new innovation, especially when discussing a tradable blockchain exchange.
A great effort to fight naked shorting nonetheless.
“Naked shorting is impossible to do when securities are issued natively on a blockchain. Had Uberâs shares been issued on a blockchain rather than through legacy systems, banks simply would not have been able to issue more UBER shares than the quantity of shares outstanding. The price-suppressive impact of the naked shorting–however large or small it was in the Uber case–simply could not have happened,” said Forbes.
Naked short selling, or naked shorting, is the practice of short-selling a tradable asset of any kind without first borrowing the asset from someone else or ensuring that it can be borrowed.
Naked shorting was enabled legally by UCC Article 8 in 1994, owing to a combination of two features: (1) indirect ownership of publicly-traded securities and (2) a special exemption that obviates the normal requirement that the seller prove in advance that it actually owns the property it is selling to a buyer.
“What we actually own is an IOU from our broker-dealer–a contractual right to the shares instead of the real thing. Your broker, in certain circumstances, has the right to conjure and sell you IOUs to more shares than actually exist,” says Forbes.
The US legal system made a policy decision to favor liquidity over solvency–to favor negotiability of securities over keeping accurate and timely records of who really owns what.
Patrick Byrne brought naked shorting to the attention of regulators but was ridiculed and eventually paid off with a winning settlement to lay low.
After the events of the ‘meme stock’ frenzy in 2021, retail investors came together and scrutinized the SEC, DTCC, and FINRA for allowing blatant market manipulation to occur.
Retail investors were momentarily prohibited from trading shares of AMC and GameStop due to liquidity concerns within several market makers and brokers including Citadel and Robinhood.
The DTCC waived billions of dollars in collateral to reset the game for the big players, cheating retail investors out of their money.
“The problem is that âoverissueâ of securities suppresses market prices. This is one of many subtle ways that value is skimmed from Mom and Pop investors in securities markets.” – Forbes.
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Market News Today: The SEC green-lighted naked shorting in 2015.
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Market News: How hedge funds manipulate the stock market.
Hedge funds have been manipulating the stock market for decades.
But it wasn’t until now that a community has risen to raise awareness of market injustices.
The shorting of both AMC and GameStop stock have uncovered a number of nefarious strategies used against retail investors.
What is the SEC doing to regulate these financial entities?
We’re here to find out.
Welcome to Franknez.com – The blog that fights for retail investors. Today we’re discussing how hedge funds manipulate the stock market and what the SEC is doing about it.
Let’s get started!
Overleveraging Borrowed Shares
Hedge funds have an incredible supply of short shares available to borrow.
This advantage has allowed them to manipulate a stock’s share price by initiating short-ladder attacks.
While supply and demand are pushing a stock’s price up, hedge funds short the stock using an insane amount of leverage.
This predatorial strategy has yet to be announced as illegal nor has it been addressed by the SEC.
Off Exchange Trading
Hedge funds and market makers are getting away with being able to trade and swap stock in foreign exchanges where the stock’s price isn’t required to be disclosed.
They’re taking retail orders and, in a way, manipulating the circulating supply by not reporting accurate transactions.
We’ve seen this happen with Barclays.
Barclays CEO, Jes Staley – Hedge fund manipulation
Reports by Finra have been made public detailing multiple fines on Barclays for inaccurate books and records.
Barclays is one of Citadel’s clearing houses.
Off exchange trading where transactions aren’t displayed on the list market such as the NYSE is a massive problem the SEC is still trying to figure out.
AMC and GameStop have had an incredible amount of FTDs, or failure-to-delivers.
These are orders that have not been executed in options, and are usually a result of a ‘short party’ not owning or not having all of the underlying asset.
This has led retail investors to the educated assessment that synthetic shares are floating in the market; shares known as naked shares used to short a stock.
According to Investopedia, “Despite being made illegal after the 2008â09 financial crisis, naked shorting continues to happen because of loopholes in rules and discrepancies between paper and electronic trading systems.”
Naked shorting has gone mainstream with CNBC’s Melissa Lee and Fox Business’s Charles Payne bringing light to this predatorial practice in the market.
Retail investors must use their voice to address these issues to the SEC.
According to The Fool, you should invest in this or that “instead”.
We’ve seen the headlines countless times.
The Motley Fool is a source that provides its subscribers with hand-picked stocks with potential gains.
With tremendous respect, stick to what you do.
The integrity of this company is to help investors pick winning stocks, not to divert them from a stock due to its potential upside that can cause hedge fund partners to lose billions of dollars.
And that’s exactly what happened.
No matter how many times mainstream media outlets tried to divert retail investors from buying AMC stock, it cost hedge funds a lot of money all year.
And at the same time, a lot of retail investors have a lot of unrealized gains.
This ladies and gentlemen is how the media has tried to manipulate the performance of a stock.
This influence can sway a new retail investor from adding to the surging volume of shares being purchased in the market.
To the new retail investor – make your financial decisions based on your own due diligence.
Not on what media sources get paid to write about.
Yahoo Finance & InvestorPlace
Platforms such as Yahoo Finance & InvestorPlace have also had their fair share of negative headlines to try and divert the public from skyrocketing AMC to the moon.
With InvestorPlace even throwing a jab at GME investors saying, “If You’ve Made Money On GameStop, You’re Not An Investing Genius”.
Perhaps not, but I’m pretty certain these investors are wealthier than the person who came up with that punchline.
These media sources have been discouraging new retail investors from investing in AMC since the beginning of the year although the stock is up year-to-date!
Manipulation In the Stock Market
Robing Hood? Stock market manipulation
I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Robinhood scandal.
This is another form of manipulation in the stock market caused by the halt of buying power.
Robinhood prevented its users from buying stocks such as AMC and GME (GameStop) during GME’s bull run.
Although restrictions aren’t as tight anymore, we’re beginning to see trusted and beloved companies get exposed as hedge funds worst nightmares become a reality.
Today we’re seeing more people learn about how the stock market moves.
If more of the public is to understand how hedge funds pose a risk to our economy and businesses, we must expose these financial institutions for who they really are.
Franknez.com fights The Fool, Yahoo Finance, and InvestorPlace
Franknez.com is fighting for the community against malpractice from all news media shunning AMC, GameStop, and other retail favorites.
This platform will serve as a positive media outlet for the community and only spread factual documentation, and news related cited-sources.
I will not encourage retail investors to take a position in any stock.
However, I will outline the facts and evidence to help you make your own personal financial decision.
How can retail investors bring awareness to the community?
Retail investors can expose false information on social media to shine light on manipulation tactics driven by hedge fund partners.
Sharing factual and positive articles relating to the performance or analytics of a particular stock is another way the investing community can stay united.
Franknez.com is a platform for the community.
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FTX opposes new bankruptcy investigations at it probes Sam Bankman-Fried connections.
(Reuters)FTX has objected to a U.S. Department of Justice request for an independent investigation into the once-prominent crypto exchange’s collapse, saying it is already conducting a wide-ranging probe that includes family members of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
FTX said in a court filing in Wilmington, Delaware, late on Wednesday that the DOJ’s proposed review would only add cost and delay to its bankruptcy case.
FTX acknowledged “fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, mismanagement, and irregularity” in its past conduct, but said that its previous wrongdoing is already being probed by the company’s new management, its creditors and law enforcement agencies.
As part of its own investigation, FTX asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey, who is overseeing its Chapter 11 proceedings, to help it secure documents from Bankman-Fried, members of his family and other insiders with information about FTX transactions that used “misappropriated and stolen” funds.
These transactions, it said, include a $16.7 million Bahamian real estate purchase under the name of Bankman-Fried’s parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried.
FTX is also seeking information about political donations connected to Bankman-Fried, asking wide-ranging questions about Mind the Gap, a political action committee founded by Barbara Fried, and Guarding Against Pandemics, an advocacy organization founded by Sam Bankman-Fried and his brother, Gabriel Bankman-Fried.
FTX said Guarding Against Pandemics’ multimillion-dollar Washington, D.C., headquarters was purchased with misappropriated funds.
A spokesperson for Mind the Gap said it did not receive direct contributions from Sam Bankman-Fried, although Bankman-Fried made donations to some political causes it recommended to its donor network.
FTX, once among the world’s top crypto exchanges, shook the sector in November by filing for bankruptcy, leaving an estimated 9 million customers and other investors facing total losses in the billions of dollars.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s bankruptcy watchdog has called for an independent investigation into its collapse, a request that received backing from a bipartisan group of U.S. senators.
FTXâs new CEO, John Ray, who worked with court-appointed examiners while leading Enron Corp and Residential Capital through bankruptcy, is prepared to testify that examiners in those two cases cost a combined $150 million and provided “minimal” benefits to creditors, FTX said.
FTX’s official committee of creditors joined the company in opposing the appointment of an examiner.
FTX also on Wednesday night filed a new list of creditors in bankruptcy court, which included financial watchdogs and government agencies from the United States, Japan and Switzerland, as well as companies including Airbnb Inc and crypto giant Binance.
Sam Bankman-Fried, who has been accused of stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers to pay debts incurred by his crypto-focused hedge fund, has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges. He is scheduled to face trial in October.
