New York Post columnist Christopher Byron has a bone to pick with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In a recent column, Byron complained that for all the brouhaha over hedge fund registration, the SEC is averting its glance to what he calls “a real crisis that could be lurking around the corner” – namely, hedge fund investing in penny stocks. Byron calls the HF audits the SEC now conducts “fishing expeditions in which the examiners don’t even know what type of fish they’re trying to catch.” The real big fish the agency should be after, he says, are those “pink sheet” penny stocks, along with holdings in the OTC Bulletin Board, which the SEC doesn’t require to be filed. Yet the agency, he says, has often called penny stocks “the most volatile, risky and crime-infested back alley of Wall Street.” Byron cites a couple of examples of some big name hedge funds that have been dabbling in penny stocks for years – in one case, investing heavily in a company that has scarcely any revenue and is allegedly linked to the Mafia – but concludes cynically, “Don’t count on the SEC taking up the subject in any case.”
