MERLIN THE MAGICIAN<----------------Sorry Buddy had to do it!!!
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DJN WSJ: Stock Chat Room Trading-places.net Is Focus Of Probe
Mar 22 1999 20:01
By Rebecca Buckman And Susan Pulliam
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
The Securities and Exchange Commission launched an inquiry
into trading activity at a stock chat room that was profiled in
a page-one article in The Wall Street Journal last week, people
familiar with the matter said.
The SEC's enforcement division contacted Chris Rea, founder
of tradingplaces.net, and asked him to provide more information
about the Web site's financial agreements with brokerage firms,
Mr. Rea said. He said the SEC also requested five years of personal
trading records from Mr. Rea, who puts stock picks on the site
but says he doesn't buy those stocks himself. Mr. Rea - whose
closely held Niles, Ill., company, Trading Places Inc., runs the
Web site - will meet with staff at the SEC's Chicago office next
week, he said. The SEC, as is its custom, declined to comment
on the existence of any inquiry, according to a spokesman.
For his part, Mr. Rea says he looks forward to his meeting
with the SEC. "It's good for them to see what we do," he said.
"There's nothing to hide."
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sites that offer rapid-fire stock recommendations to investors
over the Internet for a monthly fee. Chat-room members, who pay
$279.95 a month to belong to the site's "trading desk," also chime
in with comments, but Mr. Rea and John Jordan, a part owner of
the site, take the lead.
Trading-places.net isn't a registered brokerage firm, however,
and "day traders" who follow the site's picks must use another
firm to actually place trades. Until last week, the site explicitly
recommended brokerage firm MB Trading Inc.'s software to chat-room
customers. (MB Trading is a unit of Terra Nova Trading LLC of
Chicago.) But now, that language has disappeared from the site
as part of a wider redesign that Mr. Rea said had been in the
works for two months. Tradingplaces.net rolled out the new site
late Friday, two weeks ahead of schedule, to better handle the
surge of traffic generated by the Journal's article, he said.
Mr. Rea said he had nothing to do with the recommendation being
taken off the site, adding that the site's technical "Webmaster"
must have changed it.
(END) DOW JONES NEWS 03-22-99
11:01 PM
See a Ya later Merlin...you got some s'plainin to do..!! |
