The SIPA

Happy New Year?  It never ceases to amaze me how we become so sentimental on December 31st each year but by January 2nd we are back to our grind of running around, shopping , working, stressing and losing our patience with each other. All day today and tomorrow we will greet everybody we encounter with […]

Why the Donald is upsetting Wall Street and Washington  In the famous novel/movie ‘Peter Pan”, Peter leads a group of miscreant orphans that live in “Never Never Land” and they never grow up and they never change.  On a daily basis they have staged fights with the local Native Indians on the island and some […]

THE APPLICABILITY OF THE “ACCREDITED INVESTOR” DEFINITION AS AN AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE   Because there appears to be some confusion in the broker community about the applicability of the “accredited investor” definition to the defense of customer securities arbitration proceedings, I offer this perspective. The accredited investor definition is well-known, but for the reader’s convenience I […]

Short Sale Rules being ignored On December 17th 2015 the SEC announced formal charges against Martin Shkreli and his Lawyer for committing Securities fraud, embezzling money from his hedge fund and a variety of other charges.   The SEC also said he made misrepresentations to his ‘Executing Broker Dealer” regarding the location of stock he was […]

You’ve hired a lawyer to help you with the legal matter you’ve been grappling with, but as you prepare for that first meeting with your new lawyer, you may have concerns about how much information you should provide him or her. After all, you’re pretty sure your lawyer is subject to attorney confidentiality—that is, he or she is required […]

Risk vs Reward when dealing with FINRA   We have seen yet another increase in the ‘Death Penalty” being issued by FINRA to firms across the county for a variety of reasons ranging from failure to supervise to failure to do anything.  How did we get to this point whereby almost all actions appear to […]