Penny Pricing for U.S. Stocks Said to Get Scrutinized for Harm

According to Bloomberg,

Securities executives are trying to determine if the 12-year-old decision to narrow the price increments for American stock trading has harmed investors, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Representatives from exchanges, brokers, mutual funds and regulatory agencies held two conference calls today to discuss concerns about market structure, said the people, who requested anonymity because the discussions were private. One topic was the U.S. mandate in 2001 to trade equities in pennies rather than eighths or sixteenths of a dollar, they said.

Compressing what traders call tick sizes reduced profits for human market makers and helped drive the ascent of high-frequency traders, which now account for about half of U.S. volume, according to data compiled by Tabb Group LLC. Widening price increments for smaller companies to a five or ten cents could spur trading and prompt more initial public offerings, according to U.S. Representative Sean Duffy, who has sponsored legislation to test such a shift.

“There are a couple of groups that are really driving this and want it to happen, and it seems like everybody else may not be convinced it’ll make a huge difference but feels it should be tried because it probably won’t hurt anything,” said Justin Schack, partner and managing director for market structure analysis at Rosenblatt Securities Inc. He declined to comment on the ICI meetings.

Third Meeting

Today’s talks were the third hosted in 2013 by the Investment Company Institute, a trade group whose members manage $16 trillion, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. This year’s participants have included senior officials from the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market, mutual fund companies Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price Group Inc., broker-dealer Morgan Stanley, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, among others, according to one of the people.

Representatives of those firms declined to comment on the meetings.

Supporters of larger price increments for some stocks argue that it would encourage more volume for small companies by making trades more profitable for market makers.

The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, signed into law last year, instructed the SEC to study the impact of penny pricing and mandate a new minimum increment of less than 10 cents for “emerging growth companies” if the regulator found that was warranted.

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SEC’s Hunt for Crisis-Era Wrongdoing Loses Steam

SEC’s Hunt for Crisis-Era Wrongdoing Loses Steam

Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement officials have decided not to recommend filing civil charges against hedge-fund firm Magnetar Capital LLC, which teamed up with Wall Street firms to create mortgage securities that suffered billions of dollars in losses during the financial crisis, according to people familiar with the situation.

The decision is a sign the SEC’s investigations into whether companies or individuals broke the law with their conduct ahead of the crisis are running out of gas. Despite last week’s courtroom victory in a civil trial against former Goldman Sachs Group Inc.GS -1.13% trader Fabrice Tourre over his role in a deal called Abacus 2007-AC1, securities regulators are quietly winding down some of their highest-profile investigations related to the crisis, these people said.

Magnetar is an Illinois hedge-fund firm that was started in 2005 and named after a type of neutron star, a remnant of a collapsed sun. The firm worked closely with some of the biggest banks and securities firms to create dozens of mortgage-bond deals called collateralized debt obligations.

The securities were linked to pools of mortgages and other debts and sold in slices of varying risk and return. Magnetar helped fuel the CDO machine by purchasing the riskiest portions of certain deals while at the same time betting some CDOs would decline in value.

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Hedge Funds Are Sitting On $1 Trillion Of Debt

Hedge Funds Are Sitting On $1 Trillion Of Debt

America’s largest hedge funds have $1.47 trillion in net assets and more than $1 trillion in debt, according to a new report from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC issued the report — the first of its kind — to Congress last week, according to Bloomberg.

Under Dodd-Frank, legislators directed the SEC to collect information from hedge funds and private equity firms.

The new reporting rules require hedge fund managers with more than than $1.5 billion in gross assets to file quarterly with the SEC (and for each separate fund with more than $500 million, they have to further detail leverage and risk).

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Recent SEC ‘Bad Actor’ Provisions For Hedge Funds, Private Equity Funds, Could Unearth Unethical Backgrounds Of Executives: Securities Lawyers

Recent SEC ‘Bad Actor’ Provisions For Hedge Funds, Private Equity Funds, Could Unearth Unethical Backgrounds Of Executives: Securities Lawyers

Recent regulations unearthing the legal backgrounds of those who sell private securities could lead to nervousness and layoffs among hedge fund and private equity executives, according to securities lawyers.

The major 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reforms required the Securities and Exchange Commission to adopt so-called “bad actor” provisions, which bar those convicted of financial crimes from selling private securities. The commission adopted these rules earlier in July.

Although only crimes committed after September 2013 will automatically disqualify private fundraisers, the provision still requires investment executives to at least disclose past convictions to investors.

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S.E.C. Tries to Use Trader’s Goldman Colleague to Bolster Case

S.E.C. Tries to Use Trader’s Goldman Colleague to Bolster Case

Jonathan Egol and Fabrice Tourre were close colleagues on Wall Street, a team of traders who worked side by side on a Goldman Sachs mortgage desk in the lead-up to the financial crisis.

On Thursday, that relationship came under the spotlight as Mr. Egol took the witness stand in the civil trial of Mr. Tourre, a 34-year-old Frenchman accused of misleading investors about a mortgage security that ultimately failed.

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S.E.C. Rejects Its Own Deal With Hedge Fund Manager

S.E.C. Rejects Its Own Deal With Hedge Fund Manager

The Securities and Exchange Commission overruled its own enforcement division’s decision to settle a civil case with the high-flying money manager Philip A. Falcone and his flagship hedge fund, a rare reversal that signals a broader crackdown by the agency.

The S.E.C. recently notified Mr. Falcone and the fund, Harbinger Capital Partners, that the agency’s five commissioners had rejected “the previously disclosed agreement in principle,” according to a public filing his company made on Friday. The charges stemmed from allegations that Mr. Falcone manipulated the market, used hedge fund assets to pay his own taxes and secretly favored select customers at the expense of others.

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Still Wanted: SEC Trading and Markets Chief

Still Wanted: SEC Trading and Markets Chief

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Jo White is having difficulty finding an industry veteran or seasoned attorney to fill a top post overseeing trading firms and stock exchanges—a critical role for the agency given growing concerns about the speed and complexity of trading.

Ms. White has approached—and been turned down by—more than half a dozen senior industry officials and attorneys about possibly heading the agency’s trading and markets division, according to people familiar with the matter. The individuals she has approached include Nasdaq OMX Group Inc.’s NDAQ +0.12%Eric Noll and former Financial Industry Regulatory Authorityexecutive Stephen Luparello, who is now at a law firm.

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