Bloomberg reports that Bernie Madoff made no trades at all to buy the securities that people believed they had in their “accounts” – for the past 13 years. (which goes back to before George Bush took office….)
This makes almost no sense. Every trade at Nasdaq has a buying firm and a selling firm, and each trade is reported to the Clearing Corporation (not part of Nasdaq) in close to real time – so that the back office of the firms can reconcile any differences and arrange for transfer of the stocks if they are in certificate firm.
I believe that Madoff had no certificates for 13 years, and it may be possible his investment firm held no stocks – but it is impossible that there weren’t trades reported to the Clearing Corp from the Madoff broker/dealer firm unless the Clearing Corp itself was in on the ponzi scheme. I don’t think the SEC still has a handle on what was going on.