Would be pretty funny, well, not funny to the people that lost money. But interesting that, 7 years later, Niederhofer's '98 wipeout would help bring down Refco...
how about no one getting hurt...any traders that were caught are given stock by refco at current levels..they have stock, so do the officers... this would compensate traders. and comments.. would you take the stock at ie 10-11 and wave your rights to a class action? w
I don't trade equities, and only dabble a little on options, I am primarily focused on futures. So at this point, nor anytime in the future I intend to hold any position on RFX. The "told you so" was related to Refco's reputation, it is not a particularly good one. Messages are from other FCMs trying to instill some sense of "confusion and fear" to induce Refco clients to switch FCMs. As I have said before, I really liked Joe Murphy the few times I met him. A few personal friends went to work for Joe around '99-2000, so it is natural that I became a Refco client when I started trading as a proprietary professional. I have not started looking at other FCMs to me to clear through, although there have been a lot of messages my way in the last couple of days. Yes, part of my conspiracy theory does come from personal experience. I didn't like Bennett the only time I met him. I have no idea what Sexton is like, never met or interacted with him. So in a way, I am happy that Bennett got the boot, and the guys I like are being put in charge. Heck, if I wanted to manipulate Refco, I won't do it on page 10 of an ET thread anyways. I have just been watching too much History channel, and generally enough musing over conspiracy theories.
I get a chuckle hearing VN and Refco connected together after all these years. We will see on the Refco mess I guess. It really is too bad about Refco, it would have set the market for futures business after CME. But if it is proven to be fraud, then Refco deserve everything that it gets, no ifs and buts. I mean, I feel badly for some of the people I know at Refco, they gave up good wall street gigs for equity participation, just when the IPO looked good, they got the rugs pulled from underneath them. However, that is just the fact of life.
Talk of a settlement is far too premature at this point. I doubt the "shark" class action lawyers would advise their clients of taking a settlement at this point. The lawyers smell blood, and will get the maximum for their clients. With the possibility of criminal changes being filed (see link below), this saga is long from over. http://www.thestreet.com/_googlen/m...915.html?cm_ven=GOOGLEN&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA The key level will be $8, I just learned that THLee purchases their shares at $8. So like every trader / investor, taking a loss would be a mental block for the buy out firm. However, THLee also lost $400M in their play in Conseco, so they have just taken losses when the market overwhelms them in the past.
Thomas Lee can't sell any of their shares until february, so they are stuck with their full position for a while. With only 2 months since the ipo, none of the major lock-up periods have expired, so all the selling you're seeing is from everybody who bought at the ipo price. Well, I just saw that Bennett has been arrest. That was extremely quick. I'm glad my money is out. If the firm does go under, I would expect it to take a while for all the account holders to be made good.
Does anybody have any idea which brokers have correspondent relationships with Refco? I bet its a lot of different companies. If they go down it will be bad for everyonr in fact I would expect seeloffs in commodity markets if customers start to exit positions.
I dont know if they have much integrity actually. A few years ago Toni and I where looking into starting an EMini B/D which we ended up deciding against. In any case Refco was obviously one of the companies we talked too about being our FCM, but we also have a number of friends that have been in Chicago for a long time. Without exception all of them told us to stay away from Refco that they had no integrity at all and it was a dirty company. Having that in mind also kept me from buying the IPO, which too me did look very attractive and then again when it broke above $28 I thought it looked great, but I always had that lingering in the background..now I am very glad. Brandon
Not only SHOULD RFX be sued, but so should the firms who brought them public. Their DD should have discovered this as well, but this is just another example that Wall Street does not give a shit about the client, only their own short term objectives.