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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

What is the next step in cases like these? Let's say social media activity led someone to making an unwise trade. Suspending trading doesn't fix the problem for that person, now they're just stuck in a bad position. Does the SEC ever "fix it" for that person, or is it all damage control now to reduce the extent of the problem, and those that are already in are kind of screwed?

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The SEC can order trades to be reversed but the broker is then on the hook to make good on any shortfalls. Long ago I had a federal judge appoint me as the CEO of a small-cap company whose prior CEO (who I then gathered evidence on to send him to federal prison) had improperly created and sold significantly more shares than they were reporting. I asked for all shares sold and not reported to be reversed. The SEC declined. The system as we have (well, had, as I hope it's changed some) makes this not very hard to do. In fact, I found out some years later that one of the SEC attorneys I'd worked with went private and then aided a different small cap to pull the same scam. He got some quality Club Fed time out of the deal.

How’d you get that gig?

A handful of the largest investors knew me virtually and colluded behind my back, err, had a conference phone call among themselves, and sent the judge faxes asking him to appoint me. I had taken a board seat to figure out what was going on when the price was not reflecting buys properly at the request of the largest shareholder who lived in Europe. I though I'd get a good education about things - I guess I did, but it was OJT. Anyway, during my first board meeting the CEO figured out I wasn't going to ignore what I thought were financial discrepancies and during lunch skipped off to Mexico with the literal suitcase full of cash. When I started looking for him, his secretary told me what he'd done, with some consternation. I held the board meeting anyway, and by chance the company attorney, who was an SEC specialist, knew an SEC investigator well enough to get me a meeting the next morning. They got me in front of a judge that afternoon (never seen a court move so quickly since). I'd told the largest shareholder what was going on and he'd contacted the others and had the appointment surprise waiting for me. A lot of people lost a lot of money when all was done, including me with a total loss as I spent my own money and time for a year on travel to find yachts and houses bought with corporate fund, and at the end with me able to recover less than 10%. A ridiculous amount went to the bankruptcy attorney to put it all to bed.

Can't reply to @hnaccy for some reason.

Because I was young and stupid and once I'd accepted the board seat I refused to quit just because I'd go broke. I eventually (after a couple of years) got my expenses back, but not my time or stock losses.

Edit: I haven't thought about this in awhile, so some things popped back, and this part sounds a little emotion-seeking. After I put out a press release about me taking the CEO position and the situation, I got a phone call from what was obviously a very old lady with difficulty speaking. She told me how her broker had encouraged her to invest in the stock, and that it was all she had. I was able to get the SEC to give me a printout (on wide perforated line printer paper, for those that remember that era), and there her name was, with near a million dollars lost. I felt really bad for her, and I had energy and an overprotective nature not yet beaten out of me at that point. Hence the adventure, but with minimal success, other than the jail time for the former CEO. I did get a nice piece of blown glass artwork as a "thank you for the effort" that I quite treasure from an artist famous at the time for making White House Christmas decorations - it sits in my home office.

Wow! That must have been a fantastical experience. I bet you could spin it into a script for Netflix.

Yes, I’d watch this movie.

OT/meta: Sometimes on very new comments you have to click the timestamp in order to actually reply. I believe it's in order to prevent (rather, somewhat slow down) flame war threads.

Why did you not decline if it was costing your own money?

Sounds like a Bankruptcy Court move.

How can investors protect themselves against a scam like this?

If it's an unwise but innocent lead - like your friend who is dumb telling you what stocks to buy - then nothing because nothing criminal has happened.

If it's illegal, say a company or investor in that company created a bunch of social media bots to convince others to buy into the companies stock - then they'll get to hire a lawyer and go to court, get fined, etc.

Algorithmic amplification of content is half baked. Outcomes will be random.

Algo amplification of content needs a timeout and a redesign.

Just look at HN. No one knows what will show up tomorrow morning. No one knows whether it will waste their time or be useful. Yet everyone shows up to consume the stream. And Like the SEC the mods have to react and counter react to what ever the hell happens.

If a simple HN algo amplification model has no roadmap to improvement cause no one really knows what to do about it, then to expect a roadmap to emerge in much more complex environments like Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, FB etc is delusional.

Therefore to prevent the constant periodic randomness injection into society that algo amplification of content produces, all algo amplification of all type of content should be put on hold.

Someone losing money on an unwise trade is more of a rhetorical instrument than an actual rationale. I don't think the SEC ever "fixes" it for an individual, but their investigations can open the door to fraud litigation (often class action) of some sort.

The SEC and the regulatory complex as a whole is more generally concerned with market integrity.

Statements like "social media attempts to artificially inflate their stock price" sound quite solid but is actually a nightmare to define directly. But, working definitions and action-inducers are usually related to market integrity issues.

The main goal isn't to undue harm done, it's to prevent further harm. Halting trading both draws attention to the fact that there's an anomaly, and gives everyone time to research what is really going on. Getting compensation for the harm done is done through the courts.

Why not simply apply the gambling rules and be done with it? Then the social media activity becomes a fair game.

After that you should be able to buy a lootbox of stocks and receive fragments of penny stocks for watching videos.

Do we really need the extra steps?

Gambling rules require explicit declaration of the rules of the game and the house odds of payout.

I wasn’t entirely serious when suggesting to use the gambling rules but I think it still holds.

Poker doesn’t have pre defined odds of winning but it is still gambling, you can have the same thing with stocks. Or like sports betting maybe?

With the lootboxes, it’s easy: Simply give the chance of the stocks that might be in the box.

The rules are still there for the companies’ obligations.

Add betting transparency rules to the mix, like exchanges must provide real time dashboard showing all the bets all the time. No more mystery on who bets on what, are short positions closed etc.

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