Private stock markets? Not so fast.

"Private" stock markets, a trading trend primarily among venture capitalists based on the West coast, may soon be coming to an end.

|
Richard Drew/AP/File
Trader Peter Mancuso, left, works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday, March 13, 2012. The Securities and Exchange Commission may soon put a stop to "private" stock markets that have proliferated along the West Coast.

It was reported last night that the SEC is close to bringing some kind of action against several players in the Private Stock Markets that have proliferated over the last few years. You knew this whole concept was too good to too few people to last...

I address this in my latest piece for the Wall Street Journal today:

Ya gotta admire the spirit of this whole thing – “The rules of the regular stock market and going public are too restrictive and annoying.  So let’s just make our own stock market based on the West Coast where only us venture guys and founders and our employees can trade amongst each other.”

It could’ve been blissful, Utopian even.

Imagine a private market where tech-savvy people and the Digerati could buy and sell within their own little bubble stretching from San Francisco to the off-campus housing around Stamford to the Diablo Mountain range bordering the eastern fringe of San Jose.  There would be no need for all that physical “dead tree” paperwork or the prying eyes of CNBC and the Wall Street Journal.  There could be less rules because, frankly, these would be negotiated transactions between millionaires and billionaires – a brotherhood of enlightened self-interest, in it for the challenge and intellectual self-satisfaction with the money being a mere afterthought.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Private stock markets? Not so fast.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Reformed-Broker/2012/0313/Private-stock-markets-Not-so-fast
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe