TO:
The Right Honourable Vince Cable. Business Secretary for Coalition Government.

The regulatory bodies involved with the policing of the financial industry are powerless to combat wide spread market abuse. In 2001 the FSA launched the "Code of Market Conduct" which was set up to tackle market abuse, categorized in to the following three areas:

 * Misuse of information for example, knowing of a forthcoming takeover and buying shares in the target company prior to general disclosure of that information;

 * Creating false or misleading impressions for example, posting on a bulletin board an inaccurate story that an important deal had been secured by a major company in order to give a false or misleading impression;

 * Market distortion for example, ramping the price of shares to a distorted level.

The FSA by their own admission recognise that a substantial percentage of share trades still do not follow the code. To any active investor or trader, indications of this abuse is visible on a daily basis.The consequence of this has a significant and damaging effect on the fnancial well-being of private investors who fall prey to the malicious and illegal practices operated by some professional traders, brokers and market makers. This has turned the Stock Market from a place of investment in to a gambling hall where the house has the advantage of rigging the cards. Many Private Investors have lost substantial amounts of money when prices have been orchestrated to drop inexplicably which can, in amongst a plethora of other consequences, cause either stop losses to be run, or panic selling to occur before, once the shares have been re-allocated to insiders, an immediate price recovery takes place.

This petiton calls for:

 * an immediate and swift review of the procedures that the financial institutions must follow

 * an immediate and swift review of the powers that the regulatory bodies have in monitoring and investigating the activities of financial institutions;

 * complete transparency surrounding all transcations including order books and executed trades

* all communications (including mobile,texts, personal email) are liable to be scrutinised in the search for evidence of abuse;

 * an increase in the number of criminal investigations and prosecutions against guilty parties, and the increase in use of custodial rather than financial sentencing.

 The signatories to this petition fully support any action that will be taken to eliminate market abuse. We ask you, Mr Cable, to initiate an immediate action plan to tackle this dishonourble, illegal, and damaging practice. As Private Investors we have little recourse and rely on you as our elected representative to act on our behalf.

Links