This is NOT insider trading!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (in my opinion 
)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...09940.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
NEW YORKâThe Securities and Exchange Commission accused a former employee of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and his father with insider trading on confidential information about the bank's hedging strategies, gleaned while that employee was a junior member of Goldman's exchange traded funds desk.
Spencer D. Mindlin, 33 years old, an associate who worked at Goldman from 2001 to 2009, allegedly used his position on Goldman's ETF trading desk to tip off his father Alfred, 68, a certified public accountant, about the firm's trading. The two allegedly made $57,000 from the trading.
The charges come as exchange traded funds, which track a basket of stocks like an index fund but are traded like stocks, fall under increased scrutiny. The SEC said Wednesday the case, brought as an administrative proceeding, was the first insider-trading enforcement action involving ETFs.
Late last week a UBS AG employee was accused in an unrelated case of losing more than $2 billion of the bank's own money while trading on the firm's Delta One desk.
The agency accused the Mindlins of trading illegally in four different securities underlying the SPDR S&P Retail ETF, known as the XRT, between December 2007 and March 2008 "with knowledge of massive, market-moving trades in these securities that Goldman would later execute."
The alleged trades, which began three months after Spencer Mindlin started working on Goldman's ETF desk, were in a combination of options and shares of Sport Supply Group Inc., PC Mall Inc., Stage Stores Inc. and ValueVision Media Inc.
Goldman, the SEC said, was the largest institutional holder of the XRT at that time in order to allow customers to short it, which is to say bet against it. To hedge its own long position, the SEC said, Goldman shorted the individual securities underlying the XRT.
Spencer Mindlin is accused in the administrative proceeding of passing along information about Goldman's nonpublic holdings in the XRT and its plans to trade large amounts of securities underlying the XRT to hedge its position.
A lawyer for the Mindlins said his clients did nothing wrong and disputed the claims that the son provided nonpublic information to his father and that the father used nonpublic information to trade.
"This is a situation where a son working in the securities industry suggested a trading strategy to his father and helped the father understand and execute the strategy," said the attorney, Robert Knuts of Park & Jensen LLP. "That strategy was not based on any confidential information obtained by the son."
Mr. Knuts contends the information was based on the well-known re-balancing phenomenon within the ETF industry and publicly available information.
The SEC says the trading was conducted in a TD Ameritrade account belonging to a family member. In at least one instance, TD Ameritrade recorded a conversation between father and son discussing a trade. The SEC says in the administrative proceeding Spencer Mindlin impersonated his father on at least four calls to TD Ameritrade.
According to the SEC's administrative proceeding, Spencer Mindlin did not disclose the outside brokerage accounts to Goldman, even though the firm's policies required that disclosure.
A spokeswoman for Goldman said Wednesday the firm fully cooperated with the SEC's investigation. "The allegations by the SEC against a former employee are related to trading activity that was not conducted at Goldman Sachs," the spokeswoman said in a statement. "All of the trading was conducted in private, undisclosed accounts held outside of Goldman Sachs and none of the trading involved client information."
âDrew FitzGerald contributed to this article.
)http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...09940.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
NEW YORKâThe Securities and Exchange Commission accused a former employee of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and his father with insider trading on confidential information about the bank's hedging strategies, gleaned while that employee was a junior member of Goldman's exchange traded funds desk.
Spencer D. Mindlin, 33 years old, an associate who worked at Goldman from 2001 to 2009, allegedly used his position on Goldman's ETF trading desk to tip off his father Alfred, 68, a certified public accountant, about the firm's trading. The two allegedly made $57,000 from the trading.
The charges come as exchange traded funds, which track a basket of stocks like an index fund but are traded like stocks, fall under increased scrutiny. The SEC said Wednesday the case, brought as an administrative proceeding, was the first insider-trading enforcement action involving ETFs.
Late last week a UBS AG employee was accused in an unrelated case of losing more than $2 billion of the bank's own money while trading on the firm's Delta One desk.
The agency accused the Mindlins of trading illegally in four different securities underlying the SPDR S&P Retail ETF, known as the XRT, between December 2007 and March 2008 "with knowledge of massive, market-moving trades in these securities that Goldman would later execute."
The alleged trades, which began three months after Spencer Mindlin started working on Goldman's ETF desk, were in a combination of options and shares of Sport Supply Group Inc., PC Mall Inc., Stage Stores Inc. and ValueVision Media Inc.
Goldman, the SEC said, was the largest institutional holder of the XRT at that time in order to allow customers to short it, which is to say bet against it. To hedge its own long position, the SEC said, Goldman shorted the individual securities underlying the XRT.
Spencer Mindlin is accused in the administrative proceeding of passing along information about Goldman's nonpublic holdings in the XRT and its plans to trade large amounts of securities underlying the XRT to hedge its position.
A lawyer for the Mindlins said his clients did nothing wrong and disputed the claims that the son provided nonpublic information to his father and that the father used nonpublic information to trade.
"This is a situation where a son working in the securities industry suggested a trading strategy to his father and helped the father understand and execute the strategy," said the attorney, Robert Knuts of Park & Jensen LLP. "That strategy was not based on any confidential information obtained by the son."
Mr. Knuts contends the information was based on the well-known re-balancing phenomenon within the ETF industry and publicly available information.
The SEC says the trading was conducted in a TD Ameritrade account belonging to a family member. In at least one instance, TD Ameritrade recorded a conversation between father and son discussing a trade. The SEC says in the administrative proceeding Spencer Mindlin impersonated his father on at least four calls to TD Ameritrade.
According to the SEC's administrative proceeding, Spencer Mindlin did not disclose the outside brokerage accounts to Goldman, even though the firm's policies required that disclosure.
A spokeswoman for Goldman said Wednesday the firm fully cooperated with the SEC's investigation. "The allegations by the SEC against a former employee are related to trading activity that was not conducted at Goldman Sachs," the spokeswoman said in a statement. "All of the trading was conducted in private, undisclosed accounts held outside of Goldman Sachs and none of the trading involved client information."
âDrew FitzGerald contributed to this article.
