ANU Study on Insider Trading
Dear Shareholders
Several people have highlighted the following article to me which is based on recent findings from an ANU study that insider trading is rife on the ASX.
I am receiving more and more emails from people complaining that ASIC do nothing to protect shareholders from any form of white collar fraud. I also continue to receive emails from people caught up in frauds where ASIC knew and did nothing before people lost their money. Such is the case in the Sterling first fiasco.
We all know the dire problems facing Australia due to regulatory capture of ASIC and we all know that our financial markets are completely unregulated. My comments about the recent article about the ANU study are in red.
"Based on a brief look at the research by Dr Katselas, his view appears to be based on a very different concept of what constitutes 'inside information' and 'insider trading' than applies in any comparable market anywhere," the statement said.
ASIC seems to take the view that if everyone is doing it, it must be ok. Not that this is something that is wrong and requires thorough investigation.
For his part, Mr Padley accepts the findings of the study but says it is impractical to ban directors from trading on inside information. "In which case you'd have to ban all trading by directors which would be just ridiculous," he said.
"I think more the issue here is that the stock market has become very nasty in the short term, very non-value orientated, very momentum and news-driven, and if directors want to take advantage of that, and tell us that they are doing so, then I think that's a great piece of information. "And rather than punish them for it, I would say we probably ought to just respect it."
Both ASIC and Padley conveniently ignore the fact that the behaviour is both unethical, and unlawful. It is wrong on all counts and if Directors should be banned from owning shares then all the better. At least we would have companies with Boards that are truly independent.
In addition to the rife insider trading, yet another valuable Australian company has been taken over at a 40% discount to its NTA. This is absolutely insane and shows once again that directors must be colluding with either the share price manipulators and short sellers or the majority shareholder. The company is AVEO and Mike West has written about it here.
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/brookfields-aveo-takeover-australias-loss-and-bermudas-gain/
The algorithmic programs run by unknown entities but facilitated by investment bank brokers continue to force Australian share prices down and were/are the fundamental cause of the decrease in share price of the following companies:
Flinders Mines
Arrium
Galaxy Resources
Quintis
AMP
Aveo
Myer
Pilbara Minerals
Lynas Corp
Ten Network
Fairfax
Surfstitch
Syrah Resources
Netcomm
Cudeco
Healthscope
Pan Australia
RCR Tomlinson
Seven West Media
UGL
Dick Smith
The Reject Shop
Kidman Resources
Trust me the list goes on and on and on and on and on...................If there was an ASX stock that was taken over for below NTA you can bet it was a well orchestrated manipulation.
For those of you who want to help bring about some changes to the ASX and if you have time, there are plenty of ways you can help which are not stressful or time consuming. For many of us, we don't know whether to laugh or cry at the current situation where minority shareholders are very blatantly being defrauded and then ignored by our regulator. There are many cases I have witnessed of shareholders writing in to the regulator to seek answers to why this manipulation which is so blatant can be so easily ignored. The answer is simple. The ASIC and Takeover Panel staff in charge of ensuring a fair ASX mostly come from the companies that are doing the manipulation. Credit Suisse, DeutscheBank, UBS, Goldman Sachs etc etc..... you only need to look at the ASIC executive profiles.
Actually we are not minority shareholders at all, yes we have less money invested than these large ruthless organisations (Todd Corporation, CIMIC etc) who are the majority shareholders but we are the majority in numbers by far and we are the ones who feel the most financial pain. A billion dollar fine is nothing to Credit Suisse one of the investment bank manipulators but a $50,000 loss to 90 yr old Barry Buxton from Melbourne was his life savings and inheritance for his kids.
Thanks to everyone for all your help so far, many of your contributions have been so helpful, especially when you bring to my attention useful articles or copy me in to your correspondence with ASIC, politicians and journalists.
To email me please write to ben.pauley@gmail.com
Sincerely
Ben Pauley