No Oasis For “direct Electronic Access” Clients

Our separate bulletin on the Tribunal’s use of its public interest jurisdiction in this case is found here.

On July 21, the Capital Markets Tribunal released its decision in Oasis World Trading Inc. (Re)¹. Oasis was a proprietary day trading firm which did business through hundreds of overseas traders. These traders accessed securities markets using direct electronic access (DEA) to place trades through Oasis’s accounts. The Tribunal found that Oasis contravened Ontario securities laws in multiple ways, including by engaging in market manipulation and failing to maintain an adequate system of control and supervision.

What you need to know

• Clarity on spoofing. The Tribunal clarified the components of spoofing beyond the basic elements of placing a non–bona fide order to influence the market and then subsequently cancelling it, including that actual or subjective knowledge that a trader’s orders were intended to manipulate the market is not required to prove the offence. Rather,