On February 18th the House Financial Services Committee will hold a virtual hearing related to the GameStop (GME) fiasco. “Accountability” in a word is how the SEC may act to restore integrity to the capital markets.

• Jail time for scammers: Should you decide it is a good idea to execute a pump and dump scheme or to manipulate markets (as we recently wrote about) you ought to go to jail regardless of who you are.
• Institute regulation preventing Financial Institutions from playing both sides of a trade: High Frequency Trading (“HFT”) shops and other investors who have visibility into third-party order flow ought not to be able to trade on that information. See our brief article on the subject. Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin will be among those who testify.
• Regulatory fines treated as a cost of doing business, no criminal penalty: Regulatory fines are regularly levied that amount to nothing more than a cost of doing business. We see these fines regularly – particularly with large banks – whereby the party that committed the crime pays a fine to the SEC and is deemed neither innocent nor guilty. These fines do nothing more than add a point or two (if that) to Cost of Goods Sold. CEOs do not lose their jobs, firms are not put out of business. Question: What does the SEC do with the billions of dollars in collected fines? For starters, approximately half of the fines are not collected.

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