iBankCoin
18 years in Wall Street, left after finding out it was all horseshit. Founder/ Master and Commander: iBankCoin, finance news and commentary from the future.
Joined Nov 10, 2007
23,445 Blog Posts

Wake Up SEC: It’s $TVIX Time

I’ve been out all day on business. Pardon my absence.

I will leave my market opinions for a later post. For this one, I want to discuss the criminality that is TVIX.

It’s not all right that this publicly traded fraud mechanism is down 30% whilst volatility is up. I understand the whole reversion to the NAV aspect of TVIX. But let’s call a spade a spade, this thing wasn’t planned properly and as a result, investors lost a tremendous amount of money in it.

Credit Suisse should not be given a pass just because there are disclosures attached. And to the people who say “oh, anyone who bought this without doing research deserves it” should be flushed down giant toilet bowls for talking shit.

This thing has was trading up when volatility was down. How is an investor supposed to know that today was armageddon for the product? That sort of thinking is devoid of reason and undeserving of further discussion.

Here’s what I propose happens: the SEC gets off their asses, trying to nail high profile hedge fund managers or piker penny stock operators and go after the fuckers who invented this TVIX abomination.

Investors deserve better than this shit; and people who fuck up on this type of scale should shovel shit for a few years.

Asshats.

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53 comments

  1. derp

    and the SEC should not try to just go after anyone AFTER THE FACT, but should actually PREVENT shit from happening… but they never do.

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    • DRAXWIN

      what like that tom cruise movie where they prevent murders before they happen? hahahaha

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      • JakeGint

        Minority Report.

        Good novella too.

        ________

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      • derp

        of course not, they pass BS things like “protection acts” but they never actually protect the individual retail investors EVER.

        I mean like they could actually do some investigating. Afterall, they are given authority to look into anyone’s books. They should exist to protect us from crap like this from happening… They allowed the instrument to be traded in the first place, they can look over the books of every financial instution and every market transaction including Madoffs, yet they look the other way consistently There were 20 some agencies regulating derivatives and yet not an ounce of resources are put into crisis prevention. Politicians just look for a scapegoat after the fact, while paying the SEC money to sit there as the guard dog, yet they do NOTHING.

        Otherwise we should eliminate the SEC because they haven’t done anything for us.
        We could simply use the FBI if all they are going to do is charge people after the fact.

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      • derp

        The main reason for the creation of the SEC was to regulate the stock market and to prevent corporate abuses relating to the offering and sale of securities and corporate reporting.

        The SEC was established by the United States President in 1934 as an independent, quasi-judicial regulatory agency during the Great Depression that followed the Crash of 1929.

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        • derp

          Minority report was about arresting people based on their INTENTIONS and predicting the future. I am talking about preventing a crime not persecuting based upon intentions.

          For example, many terrorist plots have been foiled by the FBI, CIA,etc because there is evidence. Just like you can see when a company is trading an insolvent product destined to go to zero to investors, or a company cooking the books and you can see that Madoff has more money going into the company than on the balance sheet or that he is buying $X in stock with no cash on sidelines when he has capital inflows of $2x. It’s not hard if that’s your job to at least prevent a SINGLE ponzi scheme or scam in the entire life of the SEC.

          Maybe I am wrong but I am unfamiliar with reading of any prevention of any scam, crime, or ponzi scheme.

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  2. Bobby Boucher

    Amen brudda (sic).

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  3. Juice

    amen brother

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  4. Gambler

    Goodbye, I’m dead

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  5. 4fl3x

    Credit Suisse also runs XIV. I could see it doing the opposite, a massive short squeeze. Anything to fuck the retail investor.

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  6. MetalLeg

    You want the SEC to do what?

    They’ll get to it once they’re finished watching Debbie Does Detroit, part deux.

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  7. OG

    Took a look and wow…

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  8. MetalLeg

    Zero Hedge on TVIX:

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/tvix-debacle

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    • donker

      ZH WAS LONG IT

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      • CASHN1N9

        Oh Boy, ZH… I used to trade TVIX back in the day (2-3 month ago… But, since CS halted issue TVIX feb 22, No more trading TVIX for me. not even day trading

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  9. noodle

    Stop loss saved my ash before it fell below cost basis, but now I’m VIXless, and gave up a good trade. That was nonsense.

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  10. Mr. Partridge

    Dr, thanks for this post.
    About a week ago I was on Stocktwits trying to warn some kids getting long this POS…
    instead of listening they attacked me by saying I know nothing and this is the best thing since slice bread…
    Mr. Market is a better teacher than Mr.P for sure…

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    • CASHN1N9

      I saw that Mr.P

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      • Mr. Partridge

        Stupid fucks.. some guy averaged down 6-7 times, all the way down to over 40% below his initial entry (and that was few days ago)… Charlie’s buddies… on the blow

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  11. punyandy

    I love how I always get caught up in these fucking calamities. I had a very small portion in TVIX, but it’s a fuck of a lot smaller now, fuck you very much.

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  12. lol

    This is proof the government doesn’t care nor do any of their cronies (agencies). If they were were a fraction of a penny of what we gave them(just as TVIX is worth a fraction of a penny of what it was once worth, they would have halted trading long ago.
    Yet people want to blame the ones behind this for exploiting available opportunities like if there was $100 on the ground you wouldn’t look around and put it in your pocket.

    Wronging the right by employing the SEC and expecting them not to become corrupt at some point, or to expect politicians to worry aboutdoing anything other than grandstanding after the fact is pointless.
    metaphorically speaking
    “Vote for me, I saved you from death” is just simply not as appealing as
    “vote for me, or else you will die, and the bad guys will continue to run amuck”
    or “vote for me I will go get the ‘bad guys’ ”
    or “vote for me, I’ll give you things”

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  13. discoordinated

    I wonder if VXX carries any TVIX

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  14. JakeGint

    Sigh. It was a MUCH better firm when it was still called First Boston.

    ______

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  15. Yogi & Boo Boo

    About this debacle, this “product” had plenty of volume and participation. I would have expected, at the very least, that the arbs would have kept the premium somewhat close to the NAV. I understand that the cash settled $VIX expired yesterday, but the premium wasn’t created in one day. Shame on me for not tracking the premium/discount to NAV daily. But I do expect a relatively efficient market in these products.

    Maybe the giveaway was that there are no options traded against $TVIX. Regardless, Credit Suisse should not be in the business of creating derivative products if they can’t manage them. I’ve got better things to do than to trade ANY crap from these asshats EVER again.

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  16. surplusdroids

    Next up.

    A 3X leveraged instrument that attempts to mimic the volatility of a 2X leveraged volatility instrument that attempts to track an underlying volatility index.

    Devils ETF for the Devils ETF’s.

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  17. derp

    if it were the responsibility of the creators of the product and not the SEC, then all the more reason NOT to have the SEC since they cannot do their job. At least then the people will KNOW that there is no one they can depend on and not have a false sense of security!

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  18. TheArtist

    Just got in myself….holy fuck batman!
    Glad I haven’t played that one this year.

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  19. Quint

    With the VIX at 15 and CSFB wanting to make sure they don’t get their chocolate asses sued, I’m sure their trading desk is working on a plan to tank the market…problem solved.

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  20. Quint

    And now this announcement from CS!

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/credit-suisse-plans-reopen-issuance-232400592.html

    Serious insider trading lawsuits now!!!

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    • Yogi & Boo Boo

      They musta been shitting twinkies when they realized what they had done. As long as the damn thing trades as it should (by design), there would not have been any problems.

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  21. Deehydration

    Tim Sykes came to mind as soon as I read ” piker penny stock operators”.

    How about a dedicated post on that guy? Something that rhymes with what Howard posted a few days ago?

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  22. fortune cookie bullshit
    fortune cookie bullshit

    fortune cookie say TVIX .01
    Fuck you TVIX, you’re dead

    I think it’s about time somebody orchestrates a Lehman/Bear sterns type raid on CS on the next bear market.

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  23. D. Edge

    http://yelpingwithcormac.tumblr.com/….Even I might buy some YELP.

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  24. Patrick

    Where is Joe Kennedy when you need him?

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  25. Mr. Partridge

    BREAKING: CS DECIDED TO CHANGE THEIR WONDERFUL PRODUCT’S TICKER : TVIX=PNZY

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  26. dave

    You’re playing in a fixed game and you’re complaining about the outcome? This is good stuff.

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  27. DaveyNC

    Ahem. I had some and sold it Wednesday for a teensy gain. #whew

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  28. Yabollox

    How about the plaintiff’s bar or class action scammers go after them? Leave it to the private sector.

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  29. Kurt_L

    Lost ALL my gains I built up since December 2011 because of the TVIX,I had this tracker especially to protect myself from market corrections as we had yesterday..

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    • Ian

      Looks like it might finally have hit bottom, losing my ass on this!!

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  30. karen

    same for me kurt. im a widow and just told my youngest son, who was just accepted to RPI, that i would come up with $25,000 next year. now what????

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