Fascinating article I just read on Yahoo with regards to Bernie Madoff:
Seriously let’s all guess…I’m guessing about 1/3…because of shocking evidence like this:
“Our exams showed no evidence of trading on behalf of the investment advisor, no evidence of any customer statements being generated by the broker-dealer,” said Herb Perone, spokesman for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Madoff’s broker-dealer operation, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, underwent routine examinations by FINRA and its predecessor, the National Association of Securities Dealers, every two years since it opened in 1960, Perone said.
If this scumbag motherfrauder is getting examined every 2 years by allegedly competent organizations and somehow sneaks by them, I’m really curious as to how many traders/bloggers/hedge fund managers are pulling off the exact same fraud, just so they can sell products/get hits/management fees.
Seriously, nobody even checks bloggers, so we can assume the vast majority of them are full of crap. If you’re a blogger/message board poster and you want respect or not to be considered a liar/fraud, you would be signed up to Covestor or Cake Financial, two websites which verify all trades.
It’s understood regulations get in the way for some, but anonymous yellow-bellied cowards like “The Fly” can no longer brag about their gains until they prove they are real because chances are they’re lying to you.
Transparency walks, the entire rest of the financial blogosphere walks.
Obviously, this won’t happen quickly–finance has more frauds, liars, cheats and marketers than any other industry in the world–but in time, the internet will begin putting a dent in the lies and manipulation in this joke of an industry.
For now, if you see or hear about any great trade/investment, ask the person why they’re not willing to share ALL their results openly. Make them create tables like THIS. Lots of people have one good trade, but blow the rest–then they post on Elitetrader.com and pretend to be good.
This immaturity is pathetic and it must stop. C’mon finance freaks, don’t you ever want to get out of the soulless hole you’ve dug for yourselves over the years? Don’t you want people see your true stats and judge you for who you are rather than who you wish you wer?
Because if you’re good, it’s worthwhile, trust me, offers pop up everywhere
On another note, check out this paragraph from the article:
There also appear to be discrepancies between monthly statements sent to investors and the actual prices at which the stocks traded on Wall Street.
For example, his November statement showed he bought software maker Apple Inc’s securities at $100.78 each on November 12, about a month before his arrest.
But Apple’s stock on that day never traded above $93.24. The statement also showed he bought chip maker Intel Corp at $14.51 on November 12, but Intel’s highest price on that day was $13.97.
That’s right, errors anybody with access to Yahoo! Finance could pick up, but somehow $50 billion never knew what hit them. Proves my point about how infinitely dumb finance people are–much more than you can ever imagine…you could make a friggin instructional DVD teaching people how to calculate PE ratios and it’d sell bigtime…so don’t hate the playa, hate the game.
Posted in Criminals, idiots, Manipulation