Tag: SEC News (Page 2 of 22)

This Company Now Seems To Be Targeted By Naked Shorts

December 18, 2023 / Frank Nez

A new company now seems to be targeted by naked shorts, at least that’s what a CEO and former AMEX Vice President are alleging.

Collective Audience (CAUD) stock has had a rather steady share price since 2021.

Shares of the advertising company rose to more than $27 per share on Wednesday, October 25th before getting halted and crashing to its current $1.50 levels.

CEO Brent Suen has since purchased 190,000 shares of CAUD stock but claims there seems to be a high probability of fraud at play here.

“NASDAQ halted trading on October 25 due to a non-qualified float below 500,000 shares.

However, on Nov 3 and 6 the float was still 61,000 shares and the price had fallen from $27 to $5.31 down 80%.

NASDAQ did not halt the stock during that time,” Suen told Frank Nez.

Collective Audiences’ partners are now on the radar as suspects, though an official investigation has yet to be announced by the company.

One scenario states that CAUD’s partners may have sold company shares at the top and began shorting the company as prices began to plunge, causing further devaluation.

The second scenario sheds light on the possibility of naked short selling.

The CEO has a strong concern that hedge funds may have collectively shorted the company ‘naked’ after the surge on October 25th.

Tony Forte, former Vice President of the Trading Analysis Division at AMEX reached out to Frank Nez to confirm irregularities in the trading of Collective Audience stock.

“Over the last few years I have closely followed the trading activity in LGIQ, prior to and after the spinoff of DataLogiq into the Arbi SPAC.

I strongly believe at least two thirds of the floating supply is held by shareholders who have no intention of selling any of their shares until CAUD is trading at much higher prices. That conclusion would reduce the current floating supply to under 1.2 million shares.

The substantial and continuous selling in CAUD appears to be the result of computerized trading based on sell side algorithms accompanied by short selling, most likely naked, by marketmakers and large investors,” Forte shared with Frank Nez.

“The computerized trading was particularly evident on December 7th: At 10:10 am, the last sale in CAUD was 2.10.

From 10:10 through 10:15 the stock decline to 1.82, down 28 cents, on trading volume of 113,995 shares. During that five minute time span there were 576 trades.

Although the short activity, reported by FINRA, during the October 25 through December 11th period was only between 25-30% it would still indicate that 11-12 million shares were sold short.

In order for the algorithm computerized trading to show a profit in CAUD, which has a very small float, there would have to be at least 4-5 firms utilizing that strategy. That raises the question of “working in concert”.”

CAUD stock is currently down more than -86% this year-to-date.

This is a developing story — for more updates on CAUD and other stocks, follow me on X: https://twitter.com/FNez_Blogger.

Also Read: MULN Stock: 5 Billion Shares in Illegal Scheme Now Confirmed

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Ken Griffin Now Makes Surprising Claims Confirming Illegal Manipulation

December 15, 2023 / Frank Nez

Ken Griffin now makes surprising claims confirming the illegal manipulation that retail investors have been raising awareness about for years.

“Markets are efficient because of active managers setting the prices of securities,” says Citadel Securities’ Ken Griffin.

This prompts the big question, does supply and demand matter? And is it even real?

For years now, retail investors have alleged that market makers and hedge funds have the full control of where prices go.

Dark pools have allowed institutions to keep a big percentage of retail money from displaying in the lit market.

Naked shorts have allowed institutions to suppress the buying pressure of a stock, driving prices down.

And the media, unfortunately doesn’t report this.

“Firms like Citadel, firms like Fidelity, firms like Viking Global, Capital Research, we’re all running large teams of people that are engaged in fundamental research trying to drive the value of companies towards where we think they should be valued,” says Griffin.

If market makers and hedge funds have the ability to decide what the stock price of a company should be, then this annihilates the market’s integrity when hedge funds such as Citadel have a dark history of market manipulation.

In September, Citadel was charged for illegal short selling violations by the SEC after incorrectly marking short sales as long sales for the duration of five years.

“Compliance with the order marking requirements of Reg SHO is a key component of regulatory efforts to curtail abusive market practices, including ‘naked’ short selling,” said Mark Cave, Associate Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.

“This action against Citadel Securities demonstrates that a broker-dealer’s failure to comply with the requirements of Reg SHO can have negative downstream consequences on the accuracy of the firm’s electronic records, including its electronic blue sheet reporting, depriving the Commission of important information about the markets it regulates.”

Should firms, such as Citadel, have total control of pricing the market?

Or is this is a direct violation of the laws of supply and demand?

MARKETS: Ken Griffin Now Makes Surprising Claims Confirming Illegal Manipulation https://t.co/w75MK85WDj #CitadelScandal
— Frank Nez 🇺🇸 (@FNez_Blogger) December 15, 2023

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Also Read: “The Game is Rigged”, Says Ex-Citadel Data Scientist

Other Market News Today

SEC Chair Gary Gensler now takes an unexpected stance against hedge funds in his latest interview with CNBC.

The Chairman, who’s been heavily criticized by retail investors for failing to create real change in the market, is making it clear on just how important short selling transparency truly is.

For years now, the hedge fund industry has been fighting against the SEC’s new rules which would require more disclosure of short sale transactions, Citadel Securities included.

The SEC approved new rules in October related to short selling.

The first rule required certain fund managers to report their short sales to the SEC within 14 days at the end of the month.

The second rule requires that financial companies that facilitate securities loans disclose information about those transactions to FINRA on a daily basis.

“Remember the events around GameStop nearly three years ago?” Gensler said.

“We have a lot of transparency in the long side, let’s add transparency to the short side that Congress mandated.”

SEC Commissioner Jaime Lizarraga stated in October that securities lending facilitates illegal trading.

“As with securities lending, short sales, provided they are conducted in compliance with applicable rules, can play a valuable price discovery role in our capital markets.

That said, they can sometimes contribute to, or even cause, precipitous price declines, facilitate market manipulation, and generate market uncertainty and volatility”, the Commissioner said.

Now Gary Gensler is pushing short sale transparency.

“Congress weighed in after the financial crisis and mandated that the SEC address and have rules for transparency around short selling for investment managers,” he said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday.

“I got to the agency nine years later and the agency had not done a congressional mandate. I’m very proud we took it up.”

This is a developing story.

Also Read: South Korea Regulators Now Probe Into Illegal Short Selling