Nothing to See Here: How to Say It When You Need to

Abstract

Now is a great time to commit financial fraud. We show decades-long, strikingly suspicious return patterns in the stocks of many of the world's publicly traded companies as examples of what you can get away with if you try. We show the willingness of regulators, government officials, academics, journalists, and others to turn a blind eye to evidence of malfeasance with a publicly maintained, years-long email thread with the world's financial regulators. We use articles from the Financial Times to provide specific, practical examples of how to say there is nothing to see here when you need to. We analyze the incentive structure created by a type of market manipulation available to large quantitative hedge funds to provide specific, practical suggestions for how to design your fraud to maximize your profit and minimize your risk. These suggestions, honed and tested for years in one of the largest financial frauds in history, should serve as useful and practical guidance to you in running your own financial fraud.

Keywords: market manipulation, fraud, algorithmic trading, overnight returns, intraday returns, market closure, anomalies, market efficiency, asset pricing, mispricing, wealth inequality, price impact, portfolio strategies