Good read
Northwest Biotherapeutics, Inc. v. Canaccord Genuity LLC, et al. (S.D.N.Y.): Cohen Milstein is leading this securities litigation against market makers Canaccord Genuity LLC, Citadel Securities LLC…
www.cohenmilstein.com
Summary:
Northwest Biotherapeutics (~$1bn market cap) filed a securities lawsuit alleging that market makers Canaccord Genuity LLC,
Citadel Securities LLC, G1 Execution Services LLC, GTS Securities LLC, Instinet LLC, Lime Trading Corp.,
Susquehanna International Group LLP, Virtu Americas LLC, deliberately engaged in repeated manipulative spoofing of NWBO’s stock from December 5, 2017 – August 1, 2022, causing NWBO to issue more than 49 million shares at artificially depressed prices.
"Despite the string of encouraging news about its lead product, NWBO’s share price has not followed suit. Quite the opposite actually—and that is not by chance. Rather, because of Defendants’ spoofing, NWBO’s share price has dropped."
Spoofing is a form of market manipulation that, in this case, was accomplished by placing “Baiting Orders” in the Limit Order Book2 or Inter-Dealer Quotation System that are not intended to be executed and have no legitimate economic purpose. The purpose of these Baiting Orders is to create a false illusion of market interest that will generate a response from other market participants that the spoofers can use to their advantage. For example, if the goal of the spoofing scheme is to drive the price down, the spoofer enters Baiting Orders to sell, to create an appearance of a downward trending market, which will then bait other market participants into entering their own sell orders to minimize or avoid suffering losses. Shortly thereafter, the spoofer will place orders to buy, or “Executing Purchases,” which are intended to be executed against the other market participants’ sell orders at the lower artificial prices prompted by the false Baiting Orders to sell. Immediately after placing these Executing Purchases to buy, the spoofer then cancels all of the Baiting Orders to sell, which completes the profitable spoofing cycle.
Defendants engaged in spoofing on 395 of 1,171—or nearly 34%—of the trading days during the Relevant Period.
Relevance to TSLA:
Observers here have regularly pointed out spoofing of TSLA, and at least two of the market makers indicted have also been TSLA market makers. We're also of course painfully aware of long periods of declining/stagnating stock price despite an endless string of encouraging results. Perhaps Tesla or people on TMC could initiate a similar lawsuit.
