Refco Fallout

[jimrockford]

Apex Capital's last posting provides yet another example of his dishonest practice of misrepresenting the statements of others.

Quote from Apex Capital:
In fact, your last accusation about where the funds of Jim Rogers were actually held at the time of REFCO's demise is completely unsubstantiated. Even extremely intelligent ET members such as Rufus have not even begun to claim to know where those funds were held at the time of REFCO's troubles.
They have prudently reserved judgement on this.
But no, not our resident bash artist!

The truth is that I never made such an accusation. I indicated uncertainty as to the how and why of the missing funds. I indicated that the uncertainty does not weaken my argument, that it certainly is not prudent to entrust funds to Refco. My argument was based not merely on the Jim Rogers case, but on Refco's longstanding history of using segregated customer funds as unauthorized bridge loans to pay Refco's debts, as established by CFTC findings since 1994. Refco consented to the CFTC findings and neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing. I began making this argument before the Jim Rogers case arose; and this was a vindication of my argument, that Refco isn't safe. Apex Capital has, in various threads, repeatedly claimed that it is safe to hold funds at Refco, and if anybody doubts this, I can "substantiate" that this was his position.

Quote from Apex Capital:
And when moderators or the powers that be at ET have also felt that your claims were libelous and unprofessional in nature, they have appropriately deleted your posts and yet you conveniently cry censorship.

The truth is that Baron, EliteTrader, and their moderators, deleted a number of posts by Apex Capital, myself, and others responding to us, and explained that this was done because the posts were "off-topic". They never stated that posts were deleted because they were libelous or unprofessional. Baron specifically assured me that Apex Capital's statements, in this regard, were untrue. Apex Capital therefore misrepresented the statements and actions of Baron, ET, and the moderators.

Anyone, furthermore, by reading my two posts dated Oct 18 in the "Refco Account Security" thread, can see that I thoroughly disproved Apex Capital's claims that I libelled him.

Anyone can read thru my postings and verify that my arguments and allegations have a great deal of "substantiation" collected from various sources, including the CFTC, the CME, the FDIC, the NFA, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, Refco's website, and postings by Apex Capital himself. ET member 2cents, I think was the guy, who complained that I gave too much supporting material. Apex Capital just keeps repeating, over and over again, that my claims are "unsubstantiated", when in fact, it is Apex Capital, not me, who has been making unsubstantiated claims.

 

[Apex Capital]

Quote from jimrockford:

The truth is that I never made such an accusation. I indicated uncertainty as to the how and why of the missing funds.

Here is your accusation, stating as fact that REFCO embezzled the funds of Jim Rogers because his funds were deposited into segregated customer accounts:

Quote from jimrockford:

. . . simply because he deposited it into segregated customer accounts at the Refco futures broker. This massive embezzlement from Jim Rogers should eliminate any doubt that everything Apex Capital said, about the safety of customer funds at Refco, is not only absolute rubbish, but a gross misuse and perversion of EliteTrader.

In your first quote above, you say that you never made such an accusation and that you were uncertain as to the how and why of the missing funds.- - - Now, you state unequivocally and with absolute certainty that the funds of Jim Rogers were in fact, in segregated accounts.

Which one is it, Sir?
You seem awfully confused.

 

[jimrockford]

Apex Capital has made yet another posting, demonstrating his dishonesty in misrepresenting the statements of others. His latest posting builds on such a misrepresentation, in order to create a false appearance that I contradicted myself and that I am confused. He did this to punish me for challenging his assurances that Refco can be trusted.

I had previously described the Jim Rogers dispute. My description had stated that Rogers deposited his now missing funds into segregated customer accounts at the Refco futures unit (and Refco itself, according to both CNN and CBS, has confirmed that this was the case, see http://www.marketwatch.com/news/sto...8-4450-BE73-E96F3E4C0FB1}&siteid=google&dist= and http://money.cnn.com/2005/11/01/markets/refco_rogers.reut/). Let's call that my statement number 1. Refco claims it had authorization to transfer the monies from segregated accounts to unregulated, unsegregated accounts, while Rogers denies this. Refco and Rogers both agree that the transfers were made by Refco. I don't know if the transfers occurred before or after Refco's demise. I therefore never made any accusation as to the location of the Jim Rogers monies, at the time of Refco's demise. Apex Capital then falsely stated that I had made such an accusation. I responded, "The truth is that I never made such an accusation." Let's call that my statement number 2.

Apex Capital then made another posting, in which he quoted my statement number 2, and then quoted my statement number 1, and then falsely claimed that my two statements contradict each other.

Apex Capital's posting was misleading, because he quoted my statement #1, "The truth is that I never made such an accusation", but Apex deceptively omitted the context required for the reader to determine which accusation was the subject of my statement #1. Apex Capital then built on this deceptive omission, in order to deceive the reader into thinking that I was denying that I made statement #2. The truth is that statement #1 and statement #2 are completely consistent with each other. Apex Capital created the false appearance, of a contradiction, and he did this by deceptively omitting information needed in order to understand my statement number 1.

I think this is just one more example, from an extensive pattern of such behaviour, demonstrating that Apex Capital is both a dishonest and a vicious person, who seeks to interfere with our right to have a productive discussion regarding Refco fallout. He wants to disrupt this thread, just as he successfully did when he first requested that ET close the "Refco Account Security" thread, and then made off-topic postings which successfully provoked Baron to close that older thread. I think that this debate, over what I said or didn't say, is also off-topic, and that it subtracts and distracts from any productive discussion. And I think that is exactly what Apex wants.

I reject the advice that I should allow Apex Capital to make false statements about me, without my contradicting them. I will repeat my suggestion that people who want to have a worthwhile discussion, of Refco Fallout, should complain to Baron about Apex Capital's interference.

 

[jimrockford]

A new thread by ET member ZoneTrooper claims that customer accounts at the Canadian Refco FX broker have just been frozen. See http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=887211#post887211

 

[jimrockford]

ZoneTrooper now reports that he made a mistake, and that Refco FX Canada customers can still withdraw funds.

Quote from ZoneTrooper:

Woops.

I'm sorry. RefcoFX Canada is an exception.

Those customers still can withdrawal.

I just saw the standard, we and you are all domed message, and didn't read the whole thing.



Sorry.

Mea Culpa

 

[2cents]

and HK as well:

go to www.refcofx.ca, click on chat, scroll down:
"The Refco Group has still instructed us to delay payments out of ALL Refco accounts UNTIL they sort out banking and internal matters. RefcoFX Canada and Refco Forex Ltd in Hong Kong are the ONLY exceptions."

 

[2cents]

Quote from rufus_4000:

Dang, I was just in Tokyo (almost 15 hours ago), the last leg of a long trip through Asia. There are a lot of stuff going on in the Far East, the Citadel expansion in Hong Kong is absolutely amazing (I took a tour of their new trading desk in Central), they are bidding up asian trading talents to almost 15-20% premium over US rates, unreal.

HK's awesome, blazing city... and the tax rates r just sweet... a 2-3 year posting in HK's a pretty good personal investment on its own... but lets not get too melancholic here!

tokyo? rufus sir give us a call when u next in town, sorry to sound horribly commercial here but... mark pink http://finportasia.com/ http://hedgefundjapan.com/en/index.html http://topmoneyjobs.com/en/saleslist.html who's sitting next to me is a good person to know in the world u r referring to, he's covering the region actually, incl Hawaii, not just Japan. cheers,

Now let me go off on a tangent for a second, when I started reading ET a couple of months ago, I was hoping that I would get some of "grapevine" whispers that I missed about being in the trading floor of a top-tier hedge fund or an investment bank. While there are a lot of good stuff, especially from the exchange pits, there doesn't seem to be a lot of ex-institutional types around, weird. Which makes me miss those things even more, I guess.

true, other than mcurto's threads... now how about this http://finportasia.com/cgi-bin/emarketscoop/bbs.cgi (mark pink again) its not just about Asia, some NY-centric stuff as well, altho' not much, but... ?

 

[2cents]

Quote from man:

people will rush into the open arms of investment bank's i am afraid ... do not know what to think about. tend to think competition will be reduced and service will lack. ... hmm...

not sure... over the next few weeks perhaps, but when the dust settles?
people r going to spend more time understanding the fine print, how any national/market asset protection schemes, lloyds insurance policy etc r going to apply in the event of intermediary/custodian bkruptcy, thats for sure, they r going to be more demanding wrt disclosure of relationships, corporate structure, financial statements, credit ratings etc, which is a good thing...
now if u look at this 19 Oct recap from bloomberg - attached - u'll find that even with an investment bk your money's not safe...

 

[2cents]

here goes...

 

[jimrockford]

I recommend that every trader's effort, to protect against loss of funds in a possible future broker bankruptcy, should use the EliteTrader search function to make a list of all postings made by 2cents, and read through the ones with thread titles regarding Refco. Follow every link offered by 2cents in his postings, and read all of those linked documents.