Submitted by Tony Sagami via MauldinEconomics.com,
It looks like the SEC is finally ready to put a stop to accounting shenanigans.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is finally going to do its job and put a stop to the accounting hanky-panky that artificially inflates profits.
Originally posted at Themis Trading,
Sometimes it’s nice to get a sanity check and hear other investors and market professionals views on how the stock market has changed over the past few years. We hear more and more from various market participants that the market seems to be one big correlated beast that doesn’t trade on supply and demand anymore. We have opined on this topic many times in the past, so today we would like to let you read what three other very well respected professionals recently had to say on the topic:
Having railed for years against the accounting gimmickry known as non-GAAP, with both the WSJ, AP and even Warren Buffett joining the vocal outcry in recent years, things may finally be changing. According to Dow Jones, the SEC is finally stepping up its scrutiny of companies' "homegrown earnings measures, signaling it plans to target firms that inflate their sales results and employ customized metrics that stray too far from accounting rules."
Back In April 2010, the world was stunned when in what would be the first major case dealing with the fallout from the endemic fraud prevalent during the last housing and credit bubble, the SEC charged Goldman Sachs and Paulson with securities fraud over the infamous Abacus CDO, which was subsequently featured in Michael Lewis' Big Short book and movie. There was also hope that for the first time, bankers - ostensibly from the company that does "God's work" - would go to prison.
Over five years ago, months before most had heard of "expert networks", soon to be the fixture in the biggest FBI/DOJ/SEC crackdown against hedge fund insider trading in history, and years before it would become clear to everyone that the now defunct SAC Capital was nothing but a fund making billions by trading on inside information, we quietly exposed just how it was that Steve Cohen's hedge fund would almost as if by magic, always buy (or short) biotech companies, just ahead of successful (or not) Phase 1, 2 or 3 studies.