It does go on but will preventing analysts from owning what they recommend to others help matters?
Some months ago I had a weird en-counter with the then head of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Richard Walker. I was visiting his boss, then SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, to learn what I could about the agency's prosecution of a 15-year-old New Jersey boy named Jonathan Lebed. The kid had bought shares in small-cap companies and then posted messages on the internet telling other people they should buy them too. Every time he did this, he drove the stock price up and got out with a profit. The SEC had found this investment technique offensive and so set about p...
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