InvestorMind

Welcome to Capital Account. More than $200 million in customer money is allegedly missing from the accounts of one of the largest, non-clearing, US futures commission merchants, PFG Best. That's according to regulators. The money was supposed to be in segregated customer accounts. Customers have been told their money is frozen. Does this sound oddly familiar? We will hear from two PFG Best customers, Christopher Olson and Mohamed Hawary. And there is evidence PFG Best may have been committing fraud with falsified statements for years, according to regulators. The FBI is investigating, the CFTC is alleging fraud, but why did regulators miss this? We'll talk about what this shortfall means for investor confidence when a regulated broker can get away with this undetected for years. And this is not the first time sacrosanct segregated customer funds have gone missing. MF Global went bankrupt less than a year ago taking $1.6 billion in customer money with it. We talk to a man f...

Yesterday we noted how a CBO analyst may have been terminated for her conflicting views on model assumptions, especially when they veered away from the Wall Street-defined norm. Today, we find that the same approach to dissent may have been the reason why MF Global ended up taking inordinate risk, and ultimately blowing up, leaving over a billion in client money transitioning from liquid to gas phase overnight. According to Reuters, "The former chief risk officer at MF Global who raised red flags about the firm's aggressive trading bets told lawmakers that his warnings contributed to the firm's decision to let him go in early 2011. Michael Roseman, who was ousted in January 2011 from the now-bankrupt futures brokerage, said he rang alarm bells about the firm's exposure to European sovereign debt a year before the firm collapsed in late October of 2011 ." Roseman's statement on whether his skepticism to Corzine's get rich quick scheme was the r...

(Reuters) - MF Global unloaded hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of securities to Goldman Sachs in the days leading up to its collapse, according to two former MF Global employees with direct knowledge of the transactions. But it did not immediately receive payment from its clearing firm and lender, JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), one of the sources said. The sale of securities to Goldman occurred on October 27, just days before MF Global Holdings Ltd (MFGLQ.PK) filed for bankruptcy on October 31, the ex-employees said. One of the employees said the transaction was cleared with JPMorgan Chase. At the same time MF Global, which was run by former Goldman Sachs head Jon Corzine, was selling securities to Goldman to raise badly needed cash, the futures firm was also drawing down a $1.2 billion revolving line of credit it had with JPMorgan, according to one of the former MF Global employees. JPMorgan spokeswoman Mary Sedarat said the bank did not withhold money because of th...

Investors are furious that they can't get back the gold and silver they stashed with the failed brokerage. It's one thing for $1.2 billion to vanish into thin air through a series of complex trades, the well-publicized phenomenon at bankrupt MF Global. It's something else for a bar of silver stashed in a vault to instantly shrink in size by more than 25%. That, in essence, is what's happening to investors whose bars of silver and gold were held through accounts with MF Global. The trustee overseeing the liquidation of the failed brokerage has proposed dumping all remaining customer assets—gold, silver, cash, options, futures and commodities—into a single pool that would pay customers only 72% of the value of their holdings. In other words, while traders already may have paid the full price for delivery of specific bars of gold or silver—and hold "warehouse receipts" to prove it—they'll have to forfeit 28% of the value. That has investors fuming. ...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Jon Corzine told a House panel Thursday that he doesn't know the location of client money that went missing when MF Global failed. And he argued that he inherited a firm doomed by his predecessors' bad financial decisions. Yet Corzine said he accepts responsibility for the firm's risky bets and said its customers' losses weigh on his mind "every day — every hour." The former U.S. senator was subpoenaed to explain how MF Global, which he led for about 20 months, collapsed into the eighth-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history and why an estimated $1.2 billion in client funds remains unaccounted for. Testifying before a hearing of the House Agriculture Committee, Corzine apologized to "all those affected" by MF Global's failure. The company filed for bankruptcy protection on Oct. 31 after making disastrous bets on European government debt. Corzine resigned as CEO on Nov. 3 and hasn't spoken publicly since. Full story he...

Gerald Celente founder and director at Trends Research Institute and publisher of the Trends Journal tells us how he has become a casualty of MF Global's bankruptcy to the tune of six figures! And while MF Global went belly up due to bad bets on European sovereign debt, Celente says the eurozone is next to go. Celente responds to Nouriel Roubini's forecasts of an exit from the eurozone. This after technocrats are installed in Rome and Athens to calm markets. Yet we see Italian and Spanish bond yields on the rise. Meanwhile, Spanish, French and Belgian CDS hit new records.

Man, this last 36 hours has been no fun at all. But, at least I don't work for MFing Global. I feel awful for the good employees from the former Lind-Waldock. Sucks. It just plain sucks. Sucks for me, too. In order to buy some out-of-the-money, 2012 gold and silver calls, I just sent them a check last week. My bank informed me this morning that they can't stop payment because the check has already cleared. Shit. That money is either gone for good or, at a minimum, tied up for a long time to come. For all of you who are clients of MFing Global because you had heard such good things about Lind through this website, I am truly sorry. Of course, none of us could have seen this coming but I feel terrible, nonetheless. I'll be doing some research on this end and, when I decide upon another futures/options broker, I'll be sure to let you know. That is, IF I decide on another broker. Someone posted this on the previous thread. It's an email sent last night from a commod...