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SEC Chair says regulators looking for ‘hanky-panky’ in markets
Even with the government not operating, the Securities and Exchange Commission is on the lookout for suspicious activity in financial market, Chair Paul Atkins said Wednesday.
Like most other federal agencies, the SEC is largely sidelined during the Capitol Hill impasse. But Atkins said the agency still can deploy limited levels of essential staff and services as it looks to help companies through the regulatory process — and watch for any shenanigans on Wall Street that need attention.
“What we’re concerned about is manipulative behavior,” Atkins said in a CNBC interview. “We have stopped trading on eight foreign companies on Nasdaq that showed indicia of manipulative behavior — ramp and dump, we call it. And so those have been shut down. So we are monitoring the market for the behavior that indicates, you know, hanky-panky going on in the marketplace.”
As Atkins spoke, Beyond Meat, a small-cap stock with a fairly high level of short interest, was the apparent subject of speculative meme-stock betting on Wall Street.
Though analysts generally frown on the plant-based meant manufacturer, trading exploded Wednesday and was briefly halted on the Nasdaq. At one point, the stock soared 112%.
Beyond Meat surge
It was the fourth day in a row for Beyond Market to soar, on no news other than Roundhill Investments adding it as its biggest holding to the Roundhill Meme Stock exchange-traded fund.
“When you’re looking at trading, if there is no news or about a company, and then suddenly there’s a ramp up, or a real pump up in the price, that’s inexplicable. Then we start looking at that,” Atkins said, without mentioning Beyond Meat spefifically. “We have a lot of different tools that we can use to analyze this, and we work closely with the self-regulatory organizations, the exchanges and so forth, because they are the immediate ones looking at their markets and doing surveillance over that.”
Outside of watching for irregular trading, Atkins said the agency continues to look for ways to streamline the regulatory process, adding that it is soliciting opinions on President Donald Trump’s push for the end of quarterly reporting requirements.
He said the SEC also is considering ways to reform litigation rules that are holding companies back from going public.
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