Terra Nova's customers appear to be mostly hedge funds but it also provides clearing services for other broker-dealers and registered investment advisers. Something regulators and the exchanges need to be looking at.
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The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is the largest nongovernmental regulator of US securities firms. Does FINRA have firms registered as "acting as intermediaries" between Terra and institutional investors to facilitate investments?
One of the services Terra offers is sponsored direct market access, which it says allows clients to "establish a direct connection between their proprietary platforms and the Nasdaq or NYSE Arca execution systems." Ergo, the errant trade -- characterized as a large sell order in P&G --could have come from one of the firm's clients with that type of access.
If licensed financiers facilitated this scam---and ARE NOT registered, that could mean loss of license....or worse.
LETS ASK FINRA
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (nongovernment regulator of US securities firms)
CALL (866) 776-0800
SECURITIES/EXCHANGE COMMISSION
EMAIL enforcement@SEC.gov
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REFERENCE We need to know whether Chicago politicians, and financial firms are registered as "intermediaries to facilitate investments." And whether registered firms might share a similar US address.
Financial operatives might be listed with offshore addresses at infamous money laundering havens including: Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Russia, India, Israel, Panama, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the Cook Islands, Dominica, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Panama, the Philippines, St. Kitts and the Grenadines, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Monaco, Antigua, Tortola, BVI.
2009: Sales: $28M (-26%), Income: (-$13M), Employees: 65 Rush Financial Technologies wants to serve investors in a hurry to do some stock trading. The company was founded in the early 1990s as a traditional retail brokerage offering insurance and other investment products. Today, the company has shifted its attention toward its proprietary software for direct-access trading. The company's technology platform provides real-time quotes and trading tools for active online investors, semi-professional traders, and institutional portfolio managers. RushTrade Securities, the company's broker/dealer subsidiary, handles online trading for more than 2,000 customer accounts. Terra Nova Financial Group, Inc., 100 South Wacker Dr., Ste 1550, Chicago, IL 60606
CME Group, based in Chicago and operating Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade, denies any improper trades originated on its exchanges:
The company said it saw "significant market activity due to global macroeconomic conditions" on Thursday.
Some trades on Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange's electronic platform were canceled. But CME Group spokeswoman Anita Liskey said on Friday that none of Thursday's trades would be canceled, because there were no abnormalities on its exchanges. .....
The CBOE Stock Exchange invoked a government-sanctioned rule to unwind 18 trades made in the stock of Accenture PLC that all took place within a few minutes Thursday afternoon at the price of a penny per share.
The "market" went down big because of insufficient liquidity in certain Dow Industrials / S&P 500 stocks which traded "away from the primary exchange" and took down the indices and triggered program trades to cascade all the way down, including huge number of deep-out-of-the-money options (which will still need to be sorted out, so expect volatility in next few days).
Index ETFs and options are interdependent and "contagious". It's not so much different than Plunge Protection Team supporting the market through massive purchases of options in select Dow or S&P stocks, only the trip down cascades with much higher velocity and requires less (and less) money to continue in the same direction.