The Motley Fool Hacked?

FBI agents arrest Idaho man at Portland airport on warrant alleging securities fraud, insider trading

He’s accused of electronically accessing an investment advice service’s unannounced stock picks and using the information to generate millions of dollars in trading profits and providing insider tips to at least one other person, according to a federal complaint unsealed Tuesday.

Investigators examined emails Stone sent to another person from January 20, 2021, through March 17 and found he provided stock names and ticker symbols ahead of the advice company’s announcements of stock recommendations to its paying subscribers. The complaint doesn’t identify the company.

Is Stock Market Rigged? Bill Hwang Arrest Is Start of Trading Crackdown – Bloomberg

All of Wall Street should pay close attention. The Hwang case marks an upswing of federal investigations into a slew of suspected trading abuses. Three other broad inquiries have emerged in recent months to examine so-called block trades, short sales, and well-timed wagers. They all center on the same question: Are markets rigged?

NFT Sales Are Flatlining

The NFT market is collapsing.

The sale of nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, fell to a daily average of about 19,000 this week, a 92% decline from a peak of about 225,000 in September, according to the data website NonFungible.

The number of active wallets in the NFT market fell 88% to about 14,000 last week from a high of 119,000 in November. NFTs are bitcoin-like digital tokens that act like a certificate of ownership that live on a blockchain.

SEC Gag Orders are Against Public Policy (Summary of Amicus Brief in Barry D. Romeril v. Securities and Exchange Commission)

Summary of the Argument

The SEC’s prohibition against settling defendants criticizing the SEC’s unproven allegations raises important First Amendment and Due Process Clause issues, as noted by the Petitioner. Amici raise a complementary consideration warranting review: there is no compelling public policy reason to enforce SEC “gag orders” against defendants who settle with the SEC. In fact, the opposite is true. In the statutes and regulations the SEC is responsible for enforcing (and by its own actions, public statements, and admissions), the SEC requires full transparency and disclosure for the benefit of participants in securities markets. There is no compelling justification for the SEC to break from this responsibility and single out for concealment and opacity information from defendants who settle with the SEC. To the contrary, preventing these settling defendants from speaking freely deprives the securities markets of potentially material information and so may harm the very market participants for whose benefit the SEC pursues transparency and disclosure. These important additional considerations weigh in favor of granting the petition.

SEC Flags Deficiencies in Investment Adviser MNPI Compliance Practices

Investment advisers—both registered and unregistered—should take stock and be mindful of all potential points of access they have to MNPI. The SEC will be looking closely at policies and practices concerning:-- Due diligence surrounding providers of alt data.-- Identifying and tracking relationships with clients and corporate executives or financial professional investors who may have MNPI.-- Tracking and logging expert network calls and reviewing trading of supervised persons.-- Trading investments on a firm’s restricted list.-- Ensuring that clients are appropriately allocated investment opportunities, before the adviser or its employees may act on them.