Tick size widening for some small cap stocks. Another classing example where rich and powerful are trying to rob common people

Fifteen Years After Decimalization, ‘Tick Size’ Widening for Some Small-Company Stocks

The move to nickel-increment price quotes is part of an experiment into whether widening tick sizes can boost trading in small-capitalization stocks, even as doing so could mean higher trading costs for investors.

The effort, known as the Tick Size Pilot Program, is set to start Monday with 10 stocks, and by the end of October is expected to involve about 1,200 companies. The Securities and Exchange Commission began pursuing the program in 2014 after lawmakers questioned whether larger trading increments for small stocks could boost interest in small-company shares and, in turn, initial public offerings and economic growth.

Decimalization was widely viewed as good for investors because it slashed profits for market-makers, the intermediaries that commit to buying or selling stocks throughout the trading day. Market-makers tend to profit from wide bid-offer spreads, which are the difference between prices to buy and sell a stock. With decimalization, such spreads became smaller.

Since then, some have said the shift harmed small-capitalization companies, arguing it reduced the incentives for market-makers to trade their stocks.

With large companies, which have high volumes of trading activity, market-makers can profit despite tight spreads because the shares trade so often. But small-caps are often thinly traded. So here comes a move by profit hungry market makers to profit off of common investors!

Read full article at WSJ
http://www.wsj.com/articles/fifteen-years-after-decimalization-tick-size-widening-for-some-small-company-stocks-1475421141

Do you like Gang movies like The American Gangster or Gangs of New York! Welcome to the world of gangs and mafias where there is no murder or even a pistol!

Through the dark world of cybercrime, its tentacles spread everywhere: stock manipulation, money laundering, gambling and more.

Nothing in the annals of corporate hacking compares to the portrait U.S. authorities painted Tuesday of a vast, global crime syndicate -- a mob for the digital age. As described by federal prosecutors, it was an operation of breathtaking scale, involving more than 100 people in a dozen countries, with illicit proceeds stretching into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

At its head is a mysterious Israeli, Gery Shalon -- a 31-year-old from the Republic of Georgia who prosecutors said used aliases, fake passports and banking havens to turn hacking into the backbone of his criminal enterprise.

Much as the mafia gained footholds in construction, shipping, trucking and gambling, Shalon’s organization was a conglomerate that allegedly ran illegal Internet casinos and elaborate pump-and-dump stock schemes, while dabbling in credit-card fraud and fake pharmaceuticals.

Biggest Attacks

His group is the thread that runs through many of the biggest cyber-attacks of recent years, including the largest bank breach on record, involving the theft of information relating to 83 million customer accounts from JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Along with JPMorgan, Fidelity Investments Ltd., E*Trade Financial Corp., Scottrade Financial Services Inc. and Dow Jones & Co., a unit of News Corp., confirmed they had been among the victims of hackers who worked for the group. The indictment unsealed Tuesday against Shalon and two other men didn’t name those institutions, saying only that hackers linked with the group had breached banks and other financial firms, stealing information on 100 million of their customers.

“The conduct alleged in this case showcases the brave new world of hacking for profit,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan said Tuesday in announcing two of the indictments that laid out parts of the scheme.

“It is no longer hacking merely for a quick payout,” Bharara said. “It is hacking as a business model.”

The allegations are perhaps the starkest illustration yet that even the most sophisticated computer networks, run by companies at the heart of the global financial system, may be vulnerable in the age of the Digital Don. The latest revelations come just three months after U.S. authorities arrested several men they accuse of lurking inside servers where corporate press announcements were awaiting release, in order to trade on the information before it went public.

Full article at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-10/digital-don-accused-of-hacks-at-jpmorgan-dow-jones-over-8-years