Articles Posted in Arbitration

Whether you are in retirement or are planning for retirement, you may consider working with a Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) to manage your retirement assets. RIAs offer professional financial advice and are bound by the fiduciary duty to act in your best interest. However, there are potential issues you should be aware of as you consider working with an RIA. Here is a list of 10 potential problems with entrusting your retirement assets to an RIA.

  1. Misalignment of Interests: While RIAs are held to a fiduciary standard by the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, this does not entirely eliminate the risk of self-interest affecting an RIA’s advice. For instance, RIAs might favor only those investment products from firms that are paying significant commissions to the RIA for selling that product. This means there is a significant potential conflict of interest causing an RIA to recommend the same small set of investment products to every potential client.
  2. Limited Product Offering: Many RIAs have a limited range of investment products due to affiliations with certain investment companies. This could mean you may not have access to the full spectrum of investment options that might be more suitable for your retirement needs.

The recent announcement of securities fraud charges against Trevor Milton, the former CEO of Nikola Corporation, may prove to be the first in a line of similar cases involving electric vehicle (“EV”) companies, and more broadly, companies that go public via SPACs. This situation highlights the importance of careful investment decision making, particularly in the EV and other rapidly growing, highly complex industries.

At the heart of the civil and criminal complaints against Nikola are allegations that as its CEO, Trevor Milton, regularly spread false and misleading information about the progress of Nikola’s EV products and technologies. Nikola’s focus is on manufacturing low- and zero-emissions trucks, and the complaints allege in part that under Milton, Nikola published a promotional video of a prototype truck which did not actually work, but appeared to only because the truck was set in neutral and rolled down a hill.  [1]

Promotional videos like that one, along with Milton’s enthusiastic social media posts and numerous podcast and television appearances, all painted a picture of exciting and impressive forward progress at Nikola, which Federal prosecutors and SEC regulators allege was nothing more than an illusion. [2]

It has been a tumultuous week in the investment world, with rallies among a gaggle of unlikely stocks, spurred on by a group of even more unlikely investors – retail investors who have banded together on the popular social media site, Reddit.

As has been widely reported this week, when Reddit retail investors discovered that hedge fund managers were widely shorting GameStop, AMC, and others, they urged fellow users to begin buying up these stocks. This frenzy of investment activity resulted in a short squeeze, sending GameStop’s stock price soaring, causing hedge funds to incur huge losses on their short positions, and placing popular online trading platforms in a precarious financial situation.  GameStop shares closed the week of January 25, 2021 up 400% in spite of market volatility and restrictions, and without any material change to the prospects of company.

But how did we get here?

The Wall Street Journal published an article by Jason Zweig and Andrea Fuller on August 31, 2020 explaining their analysis of how financial advisers fell short in meeting their obligations to disclose important information to individual investors like you.[1] The Wall Street Journal analyzed the filings made by investment advisers on the SEC Form CRS.  The article and analysis revealed what seems to be disturbing lack of candor by investment advisers.

It is fundamental to full and fair disclosure that if an individual investor wants to know whether their financial adviser, or a financial adviser they want to hire, has any legal or regulatory problems, that this information is easy for an investor to obtain.  To that end, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) sought to simplify the process by which an individual investor can access this information.  The result of the SEC’s efforts was the “Form CRS.”  “CRS” stands for customer (or client) relationship summary.

This information has been available.  However, for the average “Main Street” individual investor, the information was not easy to find.  And when the customer complaint and regulatory history was found, the disclosures were difficult to understand.  The Form CRS[2] was intended to address this complexity and difficulty through simplification.  Thus, the SEC created what SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said in November 2018 would be a “clear and concise” document.  I think they succeeded.  Wall Street, however, failed.

In Interactive Brokers, LLC v. Saroop, the United States Federal Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit made it clear that a broker’s contract that incorporates FINRA rules supports a breach of contract claim when the broker violates FINRA.  Further, this case reinforces the public policy of using arbitration to lower costs and create an efficient resolution forum for disputes.

Interactive Brokers that Saroop and two others (collectively, the “Investors”) opened accounts with Interactive Brokers where they were required to sign the contracts that provided that all transactions were subject to “rules and policies of relevant market and clearinghouses, and applicable laws and regulations.”  Interactive Brokers hired a third-party to trade the Investors’ accounts (the “Manager”).  Using the Investors’ margin accounts, the Manager invested in short-term futures, with a symbol of VXX.  The Manager sold naked call options for VXX, meaning that the Investors had the right to buy VVX at a set price until the option expired.  This works great if the market price increases but is a serious problem if the value decreases.  To make matters worse, the Manager traded using the Investors’ margin accounts.  A margin account is when you borrow money to purchase stock. This means that you can lose more money than you invested.

The high risk associated with margin trading prompted FINRA to prohibit purchases of VXX using margin.

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