Bully Pulpit

I’ve seen a few requests to find out what happened in FINRA’s mediation hearing/kangaroo court. So I will oblige your request even though I was forced to sign a disclaimer to never talk of the reaming I took at the legal hand of FINRA’s mediation mockery. So here’s what happened.

Up till my hearing date I had to sell just about everything in order to save my home and stay alive. This included selling my vehicles, an entire music studio & instruments that took me 25 years to aquire, tools, my parents wedding rings, art, etc etc. The local pawn shops have made a killing off of me.

So instead of walking 60 miles to my hearing in Denver I took a cab for $200. The driver was a real life natzi. I had to pawn my phone for cab fair. Having worked for a Jewish firm in Chicago for many years, the ride was a bit awkwardly intolerable.

I felt I was going to my own funeral & I wasn’t far from the truth. The police now occasionly do courtesy checks on me to see if I’ve finnally committed suicide. TDA brought their corpo attorney all the way from lovely Nebraska & another from a Denver firm to cut his teeth. The mediator might as well have been wearing a TDA tie, and I’m pretty sure he was wearing a toupee. Hell they even went out to lunch together while I waited in a conference room. He brought me a turkey sandwich & a cookie. I saved the cookie for later.

Up till then I hadn’t eaten a proper meal for around two weeks due to lack of funds because my food stamps ran out. This technique is used to gain trust by interrogators, and I certainly felt as though I was at a sentencing hearing. My crime was thinking TDA was on the level.

I was representing myself & soon learned there was no hope. Financially I forced to go to mediation 30 days before my hearing and without proper legal council, was shit out of luck. So one bit of advice is to have legal council, and if possible meet them in person. I had an attorney I paid who was “guiding” me, but was really no help at all. She made more money than my settlement. I never met her in person and she made a nice sum of money for pounting out the obvious. I felt a bit swindled again. When your down the jackles have their way.

The process of choosing a mediator was a bit wonky. TDA struct all mediator choices except for one. I ranked mine and because he was not struct, FINRA chose him even though he was not a top pick. So TDA got their guy with a 90% settlement rate. I wonder why?

The mediator gets paid handsomely either way so without legal council, my arguments went unheared. I tried to open my case and explain my arguments but you know your in trouble when the mediator says he doesn’t understand the math, or the terminology of ECN’s or most of my technical analysis. So I was doomed from the get go. So get a professional financial analyst to dumb down the technical points in lay man’s terms for the arbitration council.

TDA tried to make arguments but I covered them. One good one was where they said, “On my taxes it says trader.” But the fact is the account was mearly a retirement vehicle, and I was also a real estate agent, construction worker, consultant, janitor, & head cook & bottle washer. Trader seemed like the most applicable and politically correct.

My case was never opened, and all we did for 9 hours was negotiate a $ amount. I started at around $250,000, and TDA’s first offer was for $175. So the mediator went back and forth for 9 hours and eventually I had to settle on a paultry sum because I had no choice. I don’t wish to disclose the amount because it is embarasing.

The mediator even had the audacity to say, “my case was the most well put together than he had ever seen.” It took me a year to put together only to run out of money and forced to settle for peanuts. TDA brilliantly pushed the arbitration date out as far as possible, saying their plate was full, only to quickly snap up an earlier date for mediation. Humm. Classic.

TDA got away with murder, and both of their attorneys most likely high fived each other on a lay up case at a steak dinner while I rode home 60 miles in a natzi cab with a cookie. But the mediator kept up his 90% settlement rate.

TDA got off cheap because a full on arbitration hearing would be more expensive. I’ve been told the settlement amount is refered to as a “gift.” But it was really just a way for TDA to use it as a tax loss on the corpo balance sheet. While I swing from the perverbial gallows.

What happens afterward? You become one of the lost. I’ve had over 20 different jobs in a year and a half, walked up to 20 miles a day to & from minimum wage jobs, & put over 1000 miles on my bike in 3 months. You find yourself riding in monsoon rains, hail, snow etc. Catching the horrible H1 flu cuz you can’t see a doc. Aggrivating a Lynn Frank foot injury where you rip the tendons off the metatarals in your foot. Get put on 2 anti depressants until you can’t think, unable to afford your heart meds so it doesn’t fail. Or unable to walk because of multiple spinal injuries after working back breaking jobs. Good times.

The not so funny part is I’ve never even utilized NFLX’s wonderfull streaming platform. Hell I can’t afford cable or internet anymore, let alone food for Christ’s sake. This blog has been entirely written on a smart phone. With the loot I’ve lost, I should get a lifetime subscription but I can’t afford cable.

The mediator was very up front about my dismal hopes without an attorney. His snide remarks/jabs included, “You’d have been better off flushing your money down a toilet,” or “you have no leveredge,” or “do you know any good places to eat on Chicago because I have a case there soon.” His demeaner was condesentary and aloof, and I knew I was screwed because he was from lovely Boulder, CO. I unfortunately live in the taint of Colorado, Colorado Springs.

The aftermath is unfortunate. You find yourself working with people on work release from jail, ironic considering my FINRA mediation felt more like a sentencing hearing. I was sentenced to abject poverty for life.

I was basically pushed into a corner and pulverized for nine hours to no avail by TDA’s corpo thugs. Not a fun afternoon. All for nothing.

You unfortunately find yourself reduced to the lowest common social denominator. Taking any job you can find, living day to day, falling into the financial debt pit. Hitting up the local food pantries, looking for clothing at Good Will, etc. Always wondering where the next meal may come from, and keeping the foreclosers at bay. The best part is you buy food for your dog and sacrifice your own.

You go from a Toyota Tundra to a 1979 El Cameno that smokes like the Uncle Buck mobile. But it has potential. Just like my case. Hopefully an attorney will see the infractions & viability of my case to help save a life.

More nonsensical posts to come describing my demise, what you should do in FINRA case, & how to hopefully survive with nothing in these most peculiar of times in a town that thinks a new baseball park smack down town will be the solution to its economic depression.

The After Math

marginmadness

There will be more stories about what happened soon. Thank you for reading this blog.  Stay tuned.

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The After Math

There will be more stories about what happened soon. Thank you for reading this blog.  Stay tuned.

The End of the Doors of Perception

Ray Manzarek passed away yesterday. I’ve played many Doors songs over the years. They were a mystical phenomena of how becoming a rock star is about being in the moment, & how original music, strange at first, can eventually become timeless after society wakes up.

This case has cost me everything. The worst part for me is loosing all of my keyboards, and other instruments. It’s basically loosing your soul. 25 years of acquiring my dream studio, all gone in a flash. With no family, music was my life.

So I have 2 more days until my mediation hearing, with everything on the line. I’ve sold, pawned or gotten rid of most all of my possessions to survive.

Finding a proper job has been futile, and I now work @ a soup kitchen for food stamps. Such is the town I live in, void of hope, that’s probably why there’s a church on every block, or the tax write off.

Hopefully something positive works out, but once you loose your soul, life doesn’t have any meaning. Becoming a transient, homeless victim of predatory lending doesn’t sound like an appealing option. Obedience is suicide.

So good by for now, or forever. “Woke up this morning, with the cross roads on my mind.”

The Downward Spiral of Financial Paralysis

Page 116

You’ll find once everything you own is gone 10 over due to predatory lending an uncomfortable experience.  Eventually, you may be unable to sell anything else, without reliable transportation, gainful employment opportunities, no health care, & running out of food.   This gradual financial paralysis is not only physically but psychologically devastating.

To go from ok to the street in 8 months is a bit cataclysmic, or criminal? I’ve been in homeless preparation mode.  Recently I attended a class for a work for food stamps program.  This was new to me.  Most every one around me was recently incarcerated. I kept on wondering what crime I had commuted, being dumb?

One job offered by the program was at a hotel, which was recently the crime scene where a soldier strangled his girlfriend on Valentines Day . That would be a creepy room to have to clean up, let alone stay in.

Yesterday I rode my bike 25 miles to an interview for a maintenance job paying minimum wage.  But I was caught in a rain & hail storm, & when I got close I realized how terrible I now looked, soaked to the bone, muddy and not quite presentable.  So I decided not to make a bigger fool of myself  by not attending this wonderful employment opportunity.

The bike route I took I refer to as the “Homeless 500,” because a lot of homeless people live off of it.  As you ride I waved one dude who had a fire and tent all set up under an overpass, content to be dry.  I could see my future all in one horrendous bike ride .

The fact that you can’t even get to a job interview further reveals the slow paralysis of poverty.  Many lessons learned on my race to the bottom.

Billy Goats Gruff Complex

Page 117

Recently a “goats head” was delivered to Wrigley Field in response to TDA’s purchase and management of the Chicago Cubs.  For myself, after opening a margin extension in 2010 coincides withe TDA’s purchase of the Chicago Cubs franchise.  TDA now wants Chicago tax money to help with renovations or they’ve threatened to leave Chicago.  This financial “black mail” goes against the political ideologies held by TDA’s owner, which rallies behind the evils of corporate welfare, yet they wish to benefit from it.  This hypocritical business policy may be a part of the reasoning why TDA extended clients beyond return with little “due-dilligence.”

Maybe this is why TDA wants money from the city of Chicago because they overextended themselves on the backs of its clients it over extended?

Was NFLX’s parabolic performance momentum driven over 600% within a year fraudulent?  Or simply the result of millions of algorithmic models going off, massive institutional trading swings, the cycle of politics or the moon, or insider trading?   Was the valuation of NFLX by analytical companies, whose research and recommendations are sold as a product to companies such as TDA, simply marketing?  Or was NFLX’s price model simply speculation, fueled by analyst’s marketed recommendations for profit?  All of the above?

The Troll would like you to believe the bridge is impassable.  Legal precedence may allow other goats to pass.   Financial reform may wash a few Trolls away.

Trying to go up against TDA is like crossing the Troll’s bridge in search of greener pastures due to a barren economic environment.   For example, I live in a drought stricken region with few economically viable employment opportunities.  This alone may temp one to seek greener pastures via TDA’s TOS.

I’d be a genius if I could have been allowed to ride out the faux debt ceiling debate, instead, marginalized.  2011’s market swings have only snapped back to record highs?  The edge of the end of the “modern gilded age?”  Probably not.

Technically, logically, or from a “lay man’s” perspective, higher market averages should trickle down to overall economic wellbeing.  Ex: If the Dow rises 1000 points.  A family may/should be able to afford a better meal.  Unfortunately this economic index has been marginalized to a financial product.  Propelled by political purpose.

Stomp on the ant hill, and watch them scatter.  During the “bet ceiling debate,” in the summer of 2011.  TDA’s CEO went on tv and encouraged US debt default for the first time in history?  Is that ethical behavior for the CEO of a financial institution?  When he knows his expressed opinion to default on US debt will hurt markets, and his customers/clients accounts to in tern suffer?

All of the discovery data in the world can be useless, if unprovided.  The psychosis caused by delusions of greener pastures gone haywire as a result of a sophisticated, predatory wealth enhancement marketing exploitation programs, and potentially toxic financial products can leave you wondering the ethics of these business practices.  For instance, the mortgage meltdown, or the financial meltdown, the debt ceiling faux crisis, and the historical Cubs performance.  A billion would go a long way to rectify this in the form of, pitching?  Instead of a jumbo screen, over enhanced media isn’t the solution to the Cubs record.

Hopefully I will be able to cross the Troll’s bridge via FINRA mediation.  The odds are I won’t because the troll is scary, but what else can one do when your hungry.  TDA could have paid for Wrigley’s renovation in cash with the money it cost it’s clients in a variety of methods.  But I guess this is the game, why use your cash if you can take it from others?

Goat Head Delivered to TDA/Wrigley Field

Goat Head Delivered to TDA/Wrigley Field

The URL/link is to an article in reference to page 117 of this blog.  TDA’s blatant disregard for the general public is no better epitomized in its purchase and management of the Chicago Cubs.

With Extreme Prejudice

Page 118

You’ll notice when browsing FINRA cases the terminology “with extreme prejudice” is denoted to express verdicts against the little guy. This litigious phrase really hits home on how little empathy there is for the plaintiff.

The link below is for a great new movie on the mortgage crisis called “The Untouchables.”. It further explains the exploitation of consumers during the mortgage crisis and can be easily adapted to the securities industry in relation to the lack of “due diligence” in approving Self Directed Trading Accounts on Margin by firms such as TDA.

Whether the credit source is margin, a mortgage, a credit card, student loans etc, falling into debt is terrible, but it is also a sophisticated industry ripe with fraudulent intension.  If it is so terrible, then why do companies sell it?  Toxic Profit!

The biggest problem to win a case against as firm such as TDA apparently is to show criminal intent, and prove it beyond a reasonable doubt in court.  Kinda hard in FINRA court, where the jury/arbitration panel is comprised of attorneys, not the general public.  It feels like going to your own funeral party with killer in attendance.  To make matters worse, if you loose your case, companies can then sue you or your corporate entity/you.  Literally putting you in the grave on top of yourself.   I’ve yet to be to visit a real life cemetery for a corporation, but they do own them.

I recently found out again how hard it is to get a “restraining order” against a person who is a bi-polar psychopath.  I was denied because I wasn’t currently bleeding from a gunshot or knive wound.  My pre-empive attempt to protect myselve is much like going up against a corporation.  The figurative destruction has to be by their twisted interpretation of injury or bodily harm.

Check out this good flick at the link below.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/untouchables/

Cross Listing

Page 118

One way to make money trading is to use Cross Listings. For example, one trader in Canada, one in the USA. Both take a side of a Cross Listing, work the exchange rate on the currency on the trade. The $ can then be washed. I think?

Financial Minefield Dancing

Page 120

The hyper predatory nature of our current economy means that financial IED’s are more sophisticated and prevelent than ever.  Just check your spam box, shop at “Wallie Mart,” or have fallen victum to the mortgage scamathon.  Advanced communication capabilities fueled by modern technological advancement enable these social economic pitfalls.  They are all driven by corporate survival, divide and conquer etc.  The corporate model has become so micro-managed that the science of control has literally sucked the last drops of empathy, leaving itself morally bankrupt and physically bloated.  When viewed from a macro perspective, it is still simply producing “snake oil” for the masses, led by pin striped pied piper marketeers via their media advertising blitzes for their digital IED/trading/legal gambling platforms.  Remember, there is no spoon in our litigious environment.

TDA is a master of marketration.  All of the fancy graphics/bells and whistles on their TOS dashboard are heinously well adapted to make one feel savy and in control.  Yet you are just a click away from potential disaster.  Bloomberg was the first company to incorporate color graphics on their proprietary trading platform, making Reuters trading platform seem obsolete because their system was still formulate in DOSS “via” the green screen.  The data feeds were identical.  Bloomberg’s system just looked better and in tern, sold better.  His company built a better financial mouse trap, but it was not sold to the general public, big difference, and for good reason.  Financial institutions are able to sustain massive losses via “error accounts,” offset taxes etc.  The regular Joe Schmuck 6-pack like myself is not.   The sheer ethical reasoning to allow anyone to gain access to these platforms should be reviewed, especially margin for the masses.  People are not corporations, they work for or own them, or so they say.

In my case, many things went wrong.  TDA’s glitch in 2011 crashed my computer, leaving me with no access to my screens, while my positions ran out of control.  The account continued to spiral downward while on hold with TDA, madness.  My financial well being was literally wiped out in a flash.  Yet I had no idea at the time.  It’s a lot like being in an explosion and waking up in a hospital.

The fact is system problems happen all the time, but they are rectified internally.  Public clients of companies like TDA, have no idea of these “glitches”, unless it’s a major one like the “flash crash.”  I know because I’d have to work with the IT department if our proprietary system “fell down.”  Yet another “layer of flavor” to sugar coat their candy to the masses, while they are put on hold.  In the institutional realm, these problems are addressed  “on the hop.”

TDA will say “that’s the breaks,” and deny, deny, deny any involvement in your crisis.  But they did load the gun, light the fuse, and run away from the marketing exploitation ponzi they’ve maticulously sculpted through incessant marketing.  Pray tell if you dare question their motives.  Or they”ll unleash their corporate army of attorneys whose business is to protect the hive.

Successful con artists carefully mark out their prey.  All of the angles are taken into consideration, prior to implementation.  Leaving the mark/customer/client feeling assured they are in good hands.  Hustlers use “confidence men.”  Companies like TDA use financial consultants to take you out to lunch, call you with nice things to say, anything for the account.

Or shit, bypass the cheesy sales prick, open a self directed/destruction account, and become  a “trade assassin,” like the guy on TV.  This will leave the investment “fraud” house legally untouchable if a problem arises, right ?  Proper investment planning is so easy, even a baby can do it.  A bit cheekey, yet highly effective from a marketing perspective.  All while financial companies reap endless trading commissions.

A simple penney tax on financial commission, if ethically allotted to aid our present economies burdens would go a long way towards offsetting the federal deficit, but that might help level the playing field. Take into consideration the global financial trading playground, the metastisation of greed is mind bottling to the rudamentary investor’s knowledge of how seriously it is rigged.

An example of how the government tried to curb global hedge funds was to legally force them the flatten their book daily so the fund couldn’t then trade the left over cash on different exchanges globally based on futures rigging.  They could magically correctly make bets based on the different time zones.  What was really going on was traders were simply calling their trading desk in the next time zone, and placing the trade according to how the market was predicted based on the “spoo’s ” or other future’s derivative.

Magic, nope, just read any article about the LIBOR Ponzi scheme. The wizards simply predicted the future because the trader in the next time zone already knew.  Genious.  Almost as good as arbitrage/garbage trades, where two traders pre-arange trades of two different commodities/securities, and still profit from the commission, even if the buy/seller of the financial property wins or looses, pretty cool hugh.  Some say financial firm have liscenses to print money?

There’s the long con, retirement planning, and the short con, day trading.  In both cases the house wins.  30 year historical valuations reveal no actual gain in some financially planned accounts after taking into consideration the almost daily panic plays based on faux media hyped weather reports that the financial sky is falling for profit.

The key to be successful is a combination of long, mid, and short base, all bracket wrapped etc., balance, discipline, and luck.  If you can create an effective HFT algorithmic model, you might even get investigated if your profitable.  Or create a sector basket.  There really is no formula/valuation when money technically means nothing, especially in the toxic derivative marketplace where credit default swapping causes economic tsunamis for profit at the expense of your home.

A master fixer/firm/hustler can make the mark/client feel as if it’s their fault things turned out bad.  That’s the art if the back end of a con.  Real art has no intrinsic value, ask any legitimate starving artist.

Cheaters justice.  Deuchebag traders love to refer to “the street” like their from it.  Back in the day you may be able to come up.  But most of these fuck tards are simply trustafarians living off of predicated wealth, posing “as if.”  In the movie “Breaking Awayaking

What you don’t know, can hurt you.  Ignorance isn’t bliss, and education is dangerous for the elite.  The realization you’ve just been taken advantage of becomes crystal while you’re signing up for food stamps.  Every second there after is the study of “what if” while your simply trying to hang on, a nice slap of reality for mark.  It’s been going on since the dawn if time.  When a cave man found out if he chucks a rock and knocks the other guy out,  he can take the other guys stuff.  But these days it’s a bit out of control, and the rocks more prevalent.

TDA can hide behind the corporate veil.  Their loose and bogus contracts are simply nooses for clients.  Much like South Park’s rendition of the “Human Centapeede.”  But on the real streets there is cheaters justice.  Something TDA feverishly tries to avoid through endless litigation, hoping you give up from the financial strain from their evil gain.  People like this who have never earned an honest dime have devoted their lives to waste time (in court), creating nothing tangible.  They fancy themselves as rockstars, yet play no instrument prodigously, or with feeling.  I always thought it was a bit suspect that E-Trade sponsored a Rolling Stones tour, but Mick Jagger was an economics major.

I once worked briefly at a financial cuntsoltant company and felt horrible cold calling innocent people, trying to sell lemons off a FINRA car lot.  It was similar to when a group of snotty rich kids wanted a refund for thevcaranted a refund doryhexae they oughyvanced communication capabilities fueled by modern technological advancement , these social economic pitfalls are all driven by corporate survival, divide and conquer etc.e to the scene where frat bratsvtried to het a refundpasn’t born with an ethical bi-pass, but I was born with a double hernia, maybe that’s why I have a high thresh hold for pain.  Along with a plastic, rather than silver spoon.  The point is the financial industry is truly a countyclub, and I the piss boy.  One boss referred to the general public as “peasants,” no joke.  I once had to walk back to a deli to redo his sandwich because it had the wrong mustard, and the Italian dressing was not on the side.  Humility and compassion are characteristics of genuine leaders.  Not the contrary exhibited by “poxy brats.”

In the movie, “Breaking Away,” some rich college kids tried to return their car because didn’t work.  His son ended up refunding it, though it practically killed his dad .  It showed how Ma &Pa businesses needeevery buck in the real world .  His sons nievity cost his dad money.  The rich seemed to get all off the breaks, until he relized he was a cutter kid, and won herrch kids on a level/oval track at the y being himself.

OI will try to metamorphically reiderate the haphazards of the modern financial minefield purposely created by companies like TDA.  Hopefully it may prevent someone frtom thinking they can swim in TDA’s digital shark tank .