The Eastern Magistrates’ Court today convicted Mr Tsoi Wan of three charges of manipulating the calculated opening price (COP) of the Hang Seng Index (HSI) futures contracts in the futures market following a prosecution by the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) (Notes 1 & 2).
Tsoi, who pleaded guilty to three charges of market manipulation, was fined $60,000.
An SFC investigation found that Tsoi, who manipulated the COP of the HSI futures contracts by placing various orders during the morning Pre-Market Opening Period on 10 June 2013, 21 August 2013 and 4 September 2013, made a profit of $70,800 from these manipulative trades (Note 3).
Notes:
- Tsoi was a licensed person to carry on Type 2 (dealing in futures contracts) regulated activity under the Securities and Futures Ordinance and was accredited to Enlighten Futures Limited between 14 May 2004 and 3 January 2018. He currently does not have any active licence registered with the SFC.
- A COP is calculated during the Pre-Market Opening Period and serves as the market opening price for the corresponding product.
- The morning Pre-Market Opening Period is a 30-minute period before normal trading in the morning session begins. It is the period between 8:45:00 and 9:15:00, which is allocated for traders to place orders and for those orders to be matched in accordance with certain rules laid down by the Hong Kong Futures Exchange Limited.
