Of course he didn't cause Seis De Mayo -- no one but the lowest-information tabloid reader thinks he did. That's a straw man. The question on the table is, were all his orders bona fide? From what I've seen, the answer is "no."
As someone alluded to in an earlier post, this is similar to the Julian Assange situation who exposed authorities weaknesses and they essentially retaliated. The CFTC has to move forward on this if ONLY TO SAVE FACE. If you read the article, their programmer COULD NOT FIND EVIDENCE OF THE SPOOFING FROM THE ORDER DATA. It took an independent investigator, similar to the one that caught Bernie Madoff, to discover the spoofing. Wow, this makes the CFTC look so bad....and note the hush-hush from the CME Group on this as well. The question is "How did that investigator get notified of Nav's activities ?". I'll bet a jealous former friend ratted him out.
In court it's not so simple as that, the CME has done absolutely nothing to stop this rampant practice, that has been going on for years now.
Ding, ding, ding....WINNER-WINNER, CHICKEN DINNER. Imagine this scenario: The CFTC goes after the CME Group and threatens to shut them down.
Exactly. The practice was "tolerated" and now they take one small fish and want to make an example. The fact that till now nobody was ever convicted makes it difficult to convict now one trader. They should prosecute ALL the spoofers or none. The law should be applied to everybody in the same way. We will see now how just American justice is.
Exactly. And that is where I fall, as does streetproof (at least that is my take). IMO Nav should be fined respective to the illicit gains and banned from CME for at least a few yrs (if not expelled) for the spoofing. I'd personally vote to permanently revoke his membership. But keep it inline with the penalties of Igor and others this past fall. But trying to tie it in to the flash crash, which will have a greater impact on judge/jury/sentencing, is going to need to be airtight. Can't help but feel they did this as a publicity stunt of sorts.
Sure, attorneys will use anything they can. They'll also trot out his Grandma & his clergyman & his Cub Scout den leader to attest to what a fine young man he is. But that's all white noise. The evidence is clear, or appears to be. It's a simple case, and all the posters on this thread want to make it complicated. Maybe 0hedge is causing brain rot.
Attorneys get paid to make simple cases complicated, that's how they get defendants off the hook. It will be very interesting to watch the performance of the CFTC if it gets to court.
I think he should be prosecuted for being a bad son. Having 40 mil on the Caymans and letting your mommy work 2 jobs? WTF? Using their shitty car and not even buying them a Subaru??? Investing 2 mill in some stupid gaming start up, but not kicking in money with the household expenses??? I say 5 years as a minimum.... But he could get a movie deal called: The 36 year old multimillionaire virgin....