Waiting for the next wave...
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Are all you guys in Vegas and did not tell me to come over? LOL
Wake up
the answer to Pharma Sleuth famous question: Do you know why you are here?
Financial Times article from March 26th 2024
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https://www.ft.com/content/4fe0f032-07e5-41d7-ac85-cceb252129a3
File under: huge if true. A group of Wall Street traders maliciously drove down the share price of a Maryland biotech with a promising new brain cancer vaccine, in pursuit of the marginal profits to be made by buying the stock cheaply and selling it back to the market.
That, at least, was the allegation made by Northwest Biotherapeutics in a suit filed against seven broker-dealers including Virtu and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities in late 2022.
It accused the firms of “repeated spoofing” by using their trading platforms to place tens of millions of orders to sell NWBO that they had no intention of fulfilling. These orders were visible to the rest of the market, the complaint alleged, which led other investors to dump the shares, hammering NWBO’s valuation even as a key clinical trial yielded impressive results.
Predictably, the claims sent conspiracy-minded Redditors — including some of those who previously pumped meme stocks such as Gamestop — into a frenzy. Their refrain for several months has been that hedge funds “want to bury this company”, while largely avoiding mention of factors that might have dissuaded investors from buying into NWBO, such as a study questioning the design of its cancer trial and a negative news report on its results. Northwest had also been mired in governance problems, settling with the SEC over failures in financial reporting oversight.
Last month, NWBO and its Reddit fans were rebuffed by a Manhattan court, which granted Citadel et al’s motion to dismiss the case.
But there was a sting in the tail. In his report recommending dismissal, magistrate Gary Stein concluded that while the company had not yet done enough to tie the trading in question to losses sustained by selling shares at the artificially low prices on specific dates, almost all of NWBO’s other claims were prima facie plausible enough to be allowed to proceed.
An attempted distinction by Citadel Securities and others between orders that were cancelled or merely reduced in volume was “unconvincing”, Stein wrote. He also concluded that at this stage in the litigation, it mattered not whether they were executing orders on behalf of clients, as they exerted “control over the high-speed trading algorithms” behind the trades.
He further found that when “viewed in the light most favourable” to the plaintiff, the “allegations amply support the inference that defendants’ conduct affected the market price for NWBO stock”. In a line that seemed destined to make its way on to the r/wallstreetbets message boards on Reddit, Stein further called the claims “cogent and at least as compelling as the inference that defendants were simply engaged in legitimate trading activity.”
The report came hot on the heels of another spoofing decision in the same New York courthouse, in a civil case brought by Bermudian hedge fund Harrington against Bank of America Merrill Lynch, CIBC and TD Securities. That suit — which was referenced by Stein — survived a motion to dismiss and is currently scheduled to go to trial as early as this year.
NWBO intends to refile its complaint within days. This time around, if a judge finds the deficiencies in the biotech’s case have been fixed, it could pave the way for the so-called discovery process in which Citadel Securities and its co-defendants would be compelled to hand over internal records and relevant communications. Critics of high-frequency trading firms, who claim they have an outsized and malign influence on global markets, will be watching closely.
Citadel Securities labelled the case a “malicious lawsuit [that] blatantly misrepresents how the market functions in an attempt to shake down the world’s leading liquidity providers”, and neither Northwest nor Harrington is necessarily any closer to proving their claims. To date, no spoofing case outside those brought by the US prosecutors or regulators has prevailed.
But the default stance adopted by market-makers — who claim allegations of market manipulation are implausible while declining to divulge the commercially sensitive intricacies of their high-tech platforms — has now been effectively knocked back.
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Stein wrote that the fact NWBO did not specify what algorithmic trading programmes were used by defendants to execute their schemes or how they were used was not an impediment to its case. “It is hard to imagine how any spoofing case would survive the motion to dismiss stage if?.?.?.?‘facts solely within the defendant’s knowledge,’ were required to be set forth in the complaint”, he added. In other words, if Citadel Securities and its ilk are to beat this case and prevent a string of copycat suits, they will probably have to give the rest of us more of a peek behind the curtain.
joe.miller@ft.com
@ELTP Emperor - your goatland connection seems to f up.
I am sure yours is bigger
You are asking a lot.
It looks like if the dummy listened to you
in exactly 1 year I plan to retire...4/30/2025
Better be above 30 cents by then
You are missing a Font. Emojis font.
OMG - Yes you did NAS - good job...
Hi NAS, why the goat for Sharkey? lol
Sharkey is on our side
$10 BILLION combined IMS markets.:
5% = $$ 500,000,000 P/E Ratio 6 -> $3 P/E Ratio 8-> $4 per share
7.5% = $$$$750,000,000 P/E Ratio 6 -> $4.5 P/E Ratio 8-> $6 per share
10% = $$$$$$1,000,000,000 P/E Ratio 6-> $6 P/E Ratio 8 -> $10 per share
you could do it if you bring it down yourself and bring it back up at end of day
you welcome
That works too - keeps them warm in the winter
I though you were playing the on location stream - expected goats not deers
Thanks Sharkey.
Out of the 4 ANDA's at the FDA - do you happen to know how many (and which ones) have passed the PDUFA date and are likely to be approved before end of June?
Holly moly.
Lannett became private. Sc@@ed their investors.
Sour end.
Good we departed from them.
Goat land is an abstract place.
Picture
Phonetics: Yieltipers
Have a wonderful weekend ELTPers
I trust him with my cash
I trust him to make me rich
I trust him to make me retire in class.
I hope you will not be penalized.
This thing could explode any day
Look at Nasdaq2020 list of catalysts.
Up
Every day we have more chance for pr.
I checked - Nasrat is OK - Not in Jail.
However, not sure about the self crowned King. He disappeared - maybe he doe not have Internet access there?
Don't they have a library to try to connect?
That’s it. Ignored.
WTH?
P/E ratio down the toilet at 6.1 lol
Enough playing with the price - let's go back up
I HAVE the winning ticket
lol lol lol on the way to the bank...
You beat me - long for 13 years here...
This stock is the first stock where I see longs ask for the price to go down so they can buy more of it lol
We are partnering with Goatland for a better future lol
Merci Nas 😎🙏
Need to submit approvals for all our drugs in Europe and Japan
Back in New York
Pe ratio below 7 !!!!
Time to load up
Just put him on ignore.
He will send a request from his fake hgils yahoo account begging to reply to his posts.
_ib despicable is his full name. Some say _ib stoopid lol
My definition of spoofing is impersonation
Thank him for his awesome job!!!
Hi longs.
Nas, I went to an exclusive restaurant yesterday.
I wished my long friends could have shared with me this delicious goat dish I ordered.
We will do that after the buyout in Vegas.
Miss you guys.
_ib. You could do better. I need to buy more.
Hi team.
I am close to goat land this week for work.
Won’t write much
Glta.
Thanks ib
Take it down.
I have cash coming soon
Following your logic we should not have received a PR for the Prasco launch
---------------------------------------------------
Not our product to launch. We are only a contract mfr.