What Standards would this action violate? shorts, scenario, receives, long, his

towardsutopia21

A friend brought up this interesting hypothetical scenario..

Suppose a trader receives some spam in his email that the XYZ penny stock will be going up 1000% this year. Seeing that, he trades *against* this unsolicited advice, finds a good opportunity after XYZ has bubbled up, and *shorts* it.

I clearly see a violation of "Reasonable Basis" here.. if the trader went along with the advice and loaded up long positions in XYZ, he might also be violating "Market Manipulation". Assuming that his client's investment objectives and high risk tolerance do not prohibit penny stocks, what additional violations might be present in taking the *opposite* position in the "pump and dump" scheme?

Daniel1985

IMHO spam or trusted source, any investment action taken long or short without due diligence would be a violation of standard 5 Diligence reasonable basis. If theres no conflict with suitability then thats that. I think market manipulation would only come into play if you were pumping the stock up with one clients account only to have the INTENT to sell it high through another clients account, say where a client is paying you more money. Then you get into issues with fair dealing and professional misconduct as well.

I have taken the scenario a little further but I think for CFA L1 purposes if this question came up they would be looking for standard 5A Dilligence and reasonable basis.

That all being said, if you have a reasonable basis through first hand research & suitability is not an issue, then short the hell out of it and theres no foul. The intent to deceive or better said lack of the intent to deceive is where market manipulation is determined.