BrokerDealer.com update profiles what could turn into a legal brouhaha as the SEC’s recent strategy to use internal arbitrators could prove to be a major conflict of legal interest, as U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May’s decision Monday that the SEC may not have the authority to divert such cases from regular courts halted its action against a Georgia real-estate developer. Charles Hill was accused of profiting from trades made after he received a tip from a friend. He sued in Atlanta federal court to block the administrative action.

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The SEC has increasingly been using its five administrative-law judges to hear its cases, rather than sending them to federal court, legal experts said. Although the ruling was preliminary, and won’t necessarily be duplicated in other federal courts, it could have ramifications for other SEC cases and potentially other federal agencies.

The decision is the first by a federal judge to find the SEC’s in-house tribunal could breach the Constitution. Previous constitutional challenges to the SEC’s system of judges, based on different legal arguments, have been inconclusive or unsuccessful.

To read more, check out this article by the WSJ.

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One app is making it their mission to let everyone become their very own BrokerDealer with the use of their iPhone.

Robinhood, an iOS app that is going live in the App Store on Thursday. Robinhood uses swipes and taps to make trading stocks feel more like checking your email. Available just on iPhones (for now), the app re-imagines the brokerage as a mobile-only enterprise that fits in your pocket, where you keep the rest of your money. Whether making trades as accessible as Facebook updates is a good idea or not, the era of Touch-ID trading has arrived.

“We think it’s not a particularly engaging activity for a lot of people,” Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt says of investing in the stock market. That alienation afflicts people in their 20s especially, Bhatt says. “If people don’t think about their finances and get involved with building a financial trajectory early in life, it’s kind of a substantial problem.”

In its run-up to launch, Robinhood has amassed a waitlist of a half-million would-be users, according to Bhatt.

Ease of access and understanding is meant to make Robinhood compulsively engaging for a new generation of investors that don’t find the stock market very accessible from the mobile screens at the center of their lives. It took me five minutes to sign up for an account, including a simple username-and-password interface for linking my bank account—no blank checks or routing numbers. The only lag time so far is waiting for the money to transfer into my trading account, which could take up to three business days, according to the app. Accounts do not require a minimum balance.

“As soon as people made one trade, we saw that they became daily users of the app,” co-founder Vlad Tenev says of Robinhood’s beta testers. On average, they started opening the app an average of twenty times per week, he says. “It’s more similar to looking at your email or your Twitter than, say, a banking or finance app.”

As the product develops over time, Bhatt says Robinhood will include features inspired by behavioral economics to nudge users toward smarter ways of managing their money.

But more important than teaching, he says, is letting new entrants to the market learn for themselves, to feel like their money is their own to use, move, and manage. “There’s just something very, very satisfying feeling like I have my investments right there in my pocket.”
For the complete article from Wired.com click here.

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A former LPL Financial broker has been ordered to pay nearly $2 million in disgorgement and penalties after being accused of bilking clients of nearly $1.7 million.

Starting in 2008, Blake B. Richards instructed at least seven clients to write checks to entities he controlled, such as “Blake Richards Investments” or “BMO Investments,” with the understanding that those funds would be invested in fixed-income investments, variable annuities or equities, according to a case filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Georgia. Instead, those funds went to pay his personal expenses, the Securities and Exchange Commission said, and Mr. Richards would provide fictitious account statements.

The majority of the funds were retirement savings or life insurance proceeds from deceased spouses, the SEC said in a press release.

“None of the investments appeared on the client’s brokerage account statements, and Mr. Richards received no commission income from these investments,” the SEC said in a statement. “Mr. Richards then siphoned off the funds entrusted to him for his personal use.”

The ruling Thursday came as part of a summary judgment by Judge Willis B. Hunt Jr.

Read the rest of the story at InvestmentNews.com

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