I'm going to begin with a disclaimer. Actually when I think about it is probably better defined as a claimer. I am not the smartest guy in the room, though I wish I were.
Now bear with me - I have a short story to tell, and I wouldn't be surprised if it resonates with a few of us. Once upon a time I used a stockbroker. He was employed by JB Were Goldman Sachs. I would on occasion telephone him and ask him to place a buy order or a sell order and he would fulfil my request at an average of $300 per trade. Not once not ever did he phone me with a tip or suggestion as to which stock I should invest in. In retrospect I could ask what was his bloody use. In light of the advent of the internet trading I suppose the answer is "not much" and I would suggest that is why the majority of us today don't even bother to use a stockbroker, but rather trade using an internet trading platform.
Now I reiterate my Goldman Sachs stockbroker Fraser Short never once and not ever telephoned me with a stock tip or trading suggestion - apart from on this one occasion when he did. One day and totally out-of-the-blue he phoned me and asked (and I'm paraphrasing) "Hey do you have any money to invest?"
I replied, "As it so happens I have $15,000 and I was just about to call you and ask you to buy Commonwealth Bank shares for me." From memory, CBA shares were somewhere between $15 and $25 at the time. Fraser, an employee of Goldman Sachs, said, "I've got a better suggestion for you. You should invest in Lend Lease."
"Why?" I asked him, not knowing a thing about Lend Lease.
He replied, "Because it is coming out with a positive announcement tomorrow."
I trusted him as my one & only stockbroker and in good faith said "Go ahead and buy $15,000 worth of Lend Lease shares for me" and he did.
The very next day Lend Lease announced to the market that it had lost 4 billion dollars on the United States real estate investment trust market. That day the value of lendlease shares plummeted. I telephoned Fraser Short my stockbroker employed by Goldman Sachs JB Were and in my naivety and shock I asked him, "Hey Fraser what is the positive news you were speaking of?"
He had the temerity and the audacity to reply that Lend Lease was now a turn-around story and everything should be remedied within two years.
Do I need to state the obvious: that I, as a small time investor, was suckered and sacrificed for the benefit of Goldman Sachs big fish clients who needed to offload their lendlease shares pronto? Do you think I am afraid of being sued by posting this? I am just waiting for the opportunity after all these years to counter sue. I have the contract note and the phone record and a recording of the phone call to prove my point on the balance of probabilities.
But why do I write this post really?
Well now I am invested in a real winner in the form of Pilbara Minerals. All the fundamentals are in place. You know it and I know it. I don't need to list the positives.
And yet there it is in the background: Goldman Sachs still screwing me over with their negative and self-serving stock broker reports that they know will have an overweight influence on the market as a whole and Pilbara minerals specifically. In my opinion Goldman Sachs is deliberately trying to damaged the Pilbara minerals share price so that it can scoop up shares much lower price. In my opinion this unconscionable behaviour has the potential to damage many of us financially. So what is the point of this post. As I said to begin with I am not the smartest guy in the room but I am trying to initiate something here, positive and justified and necessary legislative change that will screw these Goldman Sachs & co. pricks over whilst protecting our righteous financial interests. Please any of you who know more than me and who are smarter than me but are just as aggrieved as me add your two cents worth and let's get this fixed.
I would suggest a solution to any unjustified negative impact on our investments needs to go something like this. (And as a guiding principle, might I first point out this: that the federal government brought in a law to stop real estate agents from underquoting the likely price a property will sell for at auction and that a real estate agency can now be fined big time for underquoting because otherwise it gains financially by attracting would be buyers to the auction from its insincere, egregious and self-serving behaviour.)
If an investment house puts out a report that significantly devalues an ASX listed company (let's say by 10%), that this investment house eg Goldman Sachs is precluded from trading in any way in that company for 12 months and that if it does it receives a substantial fine and the fine is distributed to the shareholders who owned the stock on the day of the release of the report. Do we need a law something like this?
All suggestions are welcome. All of this is in my financially damaged and harmed opinion. Let's do our research together.
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