What I know about Madoff, which is almost nothing. But my mental ass'n of Madoff with shorting is strong....
Pre-ramble....
While it is not important to me to be recognized for such, I may have been the first to have put a label to naked shorting, having referred to the practice as electronic counterfeiting. This was ages ago, here at S.I. I had noticed willful destruction of the share price for vphm. This was easy to spot.... they had (1) a convert out with an exchange price of about $100, (2) a small float, (3) cash in the bank of nearly $7/share, and (4) a share price that went to under a buck.
Turns out that vphm was on reg sho from day one, and it's exit was ass'd with a rapid ramp in share price. Convert abuse, two orders of magnitude between exercise price and share price.
:-)
So......... rather easy to spot... not the norm.
No big deal, but it reflects the period of time that I've followed level 2 closely for oddities ass'd with a given market participant or ECN. In the old days, one could spot an adversary and follow his or her trades closely.
I'd keep lists like this bookmarked.....
allstocks.com
And when I saw curious trading? I'd look at the venue or market participant and run off to the mm list to identify them (if they weren't one of the usual culprits.... LEHM, FBRC, etc.).
So this is what I know about Madoff....
1. His firm was active in biotechs, and I frequently ran off to the mm list, curious about "MADF" who often seemed to be selling but never seemed to be buying. I considered him to be an enemy, a short who manipulated trading at options expiration.
2. As you have already pointed out, his firm was one of three that took this special interest in reg sho.....
Message 25248386
That's it. Not much. Unfortunately, I can't remember the specific stock(s) that brought his trading to my attention, and a search of posts here at S.I. didn't bring up anything of interest.
But he came up as "shortie", frequently, on my radar. FWIW. |
