Friends,
It has really come home to me that there was an operating logic at work when the Bulletin Board was first created by the SEC and the then NASD (now FINRA) all the way back in 1997. At least 7 to 10 years of planning when into creating the Bulletin Board, for purposes no one could see at the time. The first visible change was in the 1993 change in the borrow rule for short sales to a required "Locate", a term so nebulous so as to have no meaning.
The decision to create the Bulletin Board automatic trading system market was justified as an attempt to give the best small public companies in the then Pink Sheets better treatment, better access to capital and a true automatic trading system (ATS).
They skimmed off the top 6412 stocks, with an average trading price of $2.47 per share.
It became permanent in 1998 (or 1997 depending on how you look at it), and within 2 years, the attacks on these stocks began.
First were the ludicrous raids on the .Com stocks, followed by a move to use only hedge fund investments via PIPES (Private Investment in Public Equity), followed by the unleashing of unlimited short selling, to naked short selling, and finally, having halved the number of companies left on the Bulletin Board, their stocks were pressured down by supply imbalances to $.04 per share.
What was really going on? The SEC and FINRA wanted no more companies like Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, etc., to ever again see the great personal wealth of the era of entrepreneurs that began in the 1960's.
They determined to destroy any capital formation process that wasn't dependent on venture capital, predatory institutional investment, some private equity, etc.
More than 8000 companies would come and go through the Bulletin Board, with only 900 left until this week.
FINRA ordered the sale of the BB marketplace to a certainly blackened firm, Rodman, Renshaw (briefly Direct Tradings Markets Corporation) to act as their liquidator when the 3400 odd companies left alive didn't roll over and play dead on command.
Rodman was nominally brought in to save the BB market, when in fact, their principal role was to act as the designated liquidator for the SEC guided FINRA action.
Rodman Renshaw having completed their tasks, and having removed all their earnings from their shell, last night the NASDAQ halted trading in their successor shares, followed by a BD Withdrawal filing this morning to save face.
So what has been accomplished? 8000 plus companies that might have had some emerge to be major stocks (such as Priceline), are wiped out, almost in their entirety.
No one can justify raising capital for a small public company with any dependence on arms length conduct by the regulators.
The Great Bulletin Board, the market of the future in 1998, is dead with little fanfare, with the last 1800 companies being slaughtered by not even being allowed to go the OTC Market's newspaper, Non-ATS.
Next time you are out with an official who admits to being either the SEC or FINRA, give them a big kiss from the millions of shareholders in thousands of small companies who have seen billions of dollars in lost opportunity stolen from them to the favor of major industry companies and their lawyers. A kiss will be appropriate, since their mouths should be in a semi-permanent pucker from the last 14 years from their "conversations" with the beneficiaries of this outright crucifixion of the same companies and investors they were mandated by law and mission statement from the 1934 Act to protect.
In the process, the SEC and FINRA oversaw the theft of 40% of retirement accounts nationally. For that, they should face national security prosecutions.
I held out hope that someone with some ethics might step forward. In hindsight, that hope was misplaced. Our Country is only a step behind politically and legally.
There is always an accounting. I can tell you who this will come down on for practical purposes. They may tear this Country apart, but in the end, they will pay with everything they have stolen. If there is a God, he won't be on the side of the users. As a religious friend of mine carefully noted, these scum have more to fear from God than anyone alive today.
