It’s nice to see that the SEC is working to combat the onslaught of bad business practices that were pervasive during the 90’s bull market. These companies funded “research” into stocks they were not only actively investing in, but encouraging their clients to invest in as well. Of course this lead to “research” that was tainted to push the stock higher. The investment houses agreed to pay over 1.4 billion dollars in fines, fund independent research, and separate research operations from invenstment banking operations.

Having lived through the bubble as both an investor and as a dot commer this news doesn’t surprise me. We all bought stocks that were totally overpriced because of high expectation and faulty research. That’s how it was. Now I use my Datek account as a money market account.