Stock Manipulation Probe Launched After Price Spikes

Bloomberg

U.S. regulators are investigating whether investors manipulated end-of-day stock prices to avoid being forced by their brokers to sell holdings.

These gaps, which caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to swing as much as 104 points this month in the final minute of trading, suggest investment firms faced with client redemptions and plunging markets may be gaming the closing-auction system. The discrepancies spurred the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees 5,000 brokerages, to look for evidence that investors are improperly swaying prices.

This is an interesting article that goes along with some of the discussion here on ATS recently. A number of members noted that it looked like some strange moves were made, or that there appeared to be outright manipulation going on. It looks like that speculation may indeed have been correct!

Investigations like these seem to only end up in the low end of the totem poll being indicted if anything comes from them at all. Still I shall keep the hope.

I doubt we will see anything come of this though. IMO I believe anyone who begins to take any type of legal action would be paid off, or buried 6 feet under. Things like this will never get fixed.

Originally posted by Anonymous Avatar
Investigations like these seem to only end up in the low end of the totem poll being indicted if anything comes from them at all. Still I shall keep the hope.

AA:

I agree with you AA. Most of the time they make these announcements as a shot across the bow wanting the practise to stop.