Cohen Barred From Futures Is Another Slap On The Wrist

Steven A. Cohen, former head of SAC Capital, has agreed to refrain from any commodities activity until 2018 under an agreement he made with Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). SAC Capital was enormously successful hedge fund that was always suspiciously good at timing the market in certain stocks. As it turned out, that was largely because they were receiving insider information. In 2013, SAC agreed to plead guilty to criminal fraud charges and paid a $1.8 billion dollar fine. Mr. Cohen was never charged but was found to have enabled the misconduct at the firm. As part of the deal, SAC essentially dissolved and Cohen now basically invests his own ill-gotten money under the name of Point72 Asset Management. This another classic example of a white-collar criminal getting preferential treatment. This agreement will hardly bother Cohen in the slightest and in less that 18 months he can get back to business as usual. The continued weakness of securities law and the inability of regulators to give anything more than a slap on the wrist to even serial offenders only means that we should not be surprised when the criminal behavior on Wall Street continues.