Hold Brothers $4 Million Manipulative Trading Case

14. The vast majority of Hold Brothers’ traders located overseas were associated with one of two “customers,” either Trade Alpha in 2009 or Demostrate in 2010 (hereinafter, collectively, “Demostrate” or the “Demostrate traders”). These traders traded Demostrate’s capital and were monitored for risk and compliance purposes by personnel of Hold Brothers and a Hold Brothers affiliate. As an owner, Steve Hold shared in the Demostrate trading profits. Unlike Hold Brothers’ proprietary traders, however, Hold Brothers did not consider the Demostrate traders to be associated with the firm, nor did any of these traders hold licenses from any self-regulatory organization.

15. Demostrate maintained a brokerage account at Hold Brothers. Demostrate’s managing member was Tobias. Demostrate was Hold Brothers’ largest “customer,” both in terms of the number of trades and revenues generated. All Demostrate trading occurred in a single account held at Hold Brothers. All of the persons who traded through Demostrate’s account were located outside the United States, primarily in China. Hold Brothers assisted Demostrate and its traders in accessing the securities markets by providing these foreign traders with access to front-end trading platforms and access to the U.S. securities markets.

http://sec.gov/litigation/admin/2012/34-67924.pdf

 

http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/3598.html

 

i call this a big f*** BS for about a decade...and i still see it every single f** day and every second of trading session...(see my last 3000+ posts)
it 's illegal for them,but perfectly fine for others..but at least now we have a official name for it..layering..

 

11,000,000 shares a day executed that's good volume for hold brothers. i am trying to figure out did steve and tobias own that group or what the payout was. i am sure hold brothers made money on volume but what was the real setup.

 

you would think hold made a killing with the volume even if they just made .20 cents a share. the punishment is like 2 days of trading volume profits.

 

how come they have so many China traders?

 

because you can pay them in rice. its doing that or working in the apple factory.

 

how is this illegal? I used to do this all the time.

Walk up the bid, algo executes on the sell side, and then do the opposite to close out.

 

are you serious how do you think making fake bids or offers could be legal. haha