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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: How often does the SEC do something like this? More specifically: How often does volatility caused by hedge funds result in suspended trading of certain stocks?

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Frequent enough that they provide an RSS feed. List is here: https://www.sec.gov/litigation/suspensions.htm

Also check the previous years, they appear to be archived static pages as opposed to say a database query populating a template - really makes me wonder how this site is built.

To clarify, the issue here isn't just volatility. The companies in question haven't made any SEC filings in over a year, which generally means they're not really doing business anymore and certainly means it's hard to imagine a value-based case for trading them. The SEC often suspends trading after a few years of no filings (random example from 2020: https://www.sec.gov/litigation/suspensions/2020/34-89717-o.p...), and it's reasonable that a pumping scheme might push them to act faster.

Honest question - does there need to be a value-based case for trading something? Does the SEC have a mandate for stopping purely speculative trades?

Maybe something along the lines of it being better for society for capital to flow towards productive companies rather than gambling on zombies? I agree that it's an odd call.

>The mission of the SEC is to protect investors; maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and facilitate capital formation. The SEC strives to promote a market environment that is worthy of the public's trust.

On the public markets, yes, because as a participant in public markets, I'd like listed firms to meet at least a bar of 'still in business'.

On private markets, knock yourself out.

The SEC's core reponsibility is to ensure you can get complete, accurate information about the securities you're buying, which for stock means information about the company's business operations and financials. Speculation in the sense of "I bet this business will do really well in 2 years" is fine and the SEC has no mandate to interfere.

The SEC is empowered by law to stop any stock from trading for 10 days if it believes that doing so is in the public interest.

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