I caught this article from the New York Times (thank you Pat Allen at AdvisorTweets) detailing one broker who was penalized for sending a series of “misrepresentative and unbalanced” messages on Twitter.
Click here to read Tweets Land Broker in Trouble.
FINRA brought disciplinary action against Jenny Quyen Ta for several violations, including undisclosed outside business activities, undisclosed outside brokerage accounts, and of importance to this post, undisclosed tweets. For violating several rules, Ms. Ta was fined $10,000 and suspended from associating with any FINRA member firm for one year.
Despite just picking this story up today, FINRA actually brought the disciplinary action forward on November 23, 2010. So this information has been around for half a year, but we’re hearing of it only now.
Ms. Ta posted at least 372 tweets from her Twitter account from April to December 2009, 32 of which were about “overwhelmingly positive” mentions of imminent price increases in Advanced Micro Devices stock (NYSE: AMD). One example of Ta’s tweets:
Its going 2 b a good Xmas & 2010! Ck out AMD! Like I have said, it should b @ least a $10B co. which should b @ $ 15/shs. HappyTrading!
Most readers would agree that this type of tweet is a blatant violation of FINRA regulations.
So don’t think FINRA isn’t watching social media activity for questionable content. And if you’re interested in reading the full disciplinary action report, click here.
