Expert witness services for the securities industry

Somebody gave you an insider tip and you want to use options? Think again.
The SEC sees you coming. Good luck justifying yourself to a jury. The stick will hurt.

You remember our cryptocrook? Quant WizKid, market-neutral hedge fund, Cryptocurrency arbitrage great returns, $90m AUM… Except that it was a Ponzi.
His sentence just came out: 7½ years of jail. Here are the explanation & the context.

Virgin Galactic’s successful flight may have brought joy to Mr. Branson, but it will also bring some after-party headaches.
The entrepreneur and space explorer is accused of basic earthly financial misgivings for this same flight – a pretty serious insider trading issue.

UBS got flack for recommending VIX ETFs to its clients. This suitability case has in fact deep roots in a significant ETF classification challenge: many product databases are mishandling the wide diversity of ETNs. Significant litigation is to be expected as a result.

When you are spoofing gold futures, don’t brag about it in chat rooms.
A few gold futures traders got one year in the clink for market manipulation.

The German Supreme Court has made it official; the Cum/Ex was not a loophole but a blatant money grab.
The two Warburg executives can expect jail time, and their firm a bankruptcy.
Many others will follow.

The ARRC has recommended the CME’s methodology to calculate a term structure for SOFR. This is big news.
This article explains SOFR’s weaknesses, what a term structure is, why we need one and how the CME calculates its own.

In a new version of the transfer pricing strategy, Tom Sandell virtually relocated his hedge fund from New York to Florida to avoid NY tax liabilities on his deferred comp.
The story didn’t finish well. A whistleblower and the NY AG forced him to cough up $105m.

LIBOR, the most important number in the world, had a good run for the last 50 years, but it is going away.
SOFR, its replacement, is not subject to manipulations but has a host of problems.
The transition is difficult.

Not all central bankers and diplomats have a good opinion of cryptocurrencies.
They are assessing their costs & benefits through articles in prime newspapers.
One diplomat/economist just called for their outright ban.