The SEC Office of Investor Education and Advocacy issued an updated Investor Alert to warn investors about fraudsters who may utilize social media to spread false or misleading information about stocks. The Investor Alert stated that the key to avoiding investment fraud on the Internet is to be an educated investor. The Investor Alert provided a list of five tips to help investors avoid becoming the victims of fraud: be wary of unsolicited offers to invest; look out for red flags, such as claims that are too good to be true; remain alert to "affinity fraud," since an investment can be risky

The Enforcement Section of the North American Securities Administrators Association ("NASAA") identified emerging and persistent threats that investors are likely to face in 2015. The top threats that NASAA identified as emerging included: binary options, marijuana industry investments, stream-of-income investments and digital currency and cybersecurity risks. The top threats identified as persistent included: Reg D/Rule 506 Private Offerings, pyramid and other Ponzi schemes, real estate schemes (including those that use promissory notes), affinity fraud, Internet fraud (including the misuse

In a speech at the Swaps Execution Facilities Conference ("SEFCON V") hosted by the Wholesale Markets Brokers' Association Americas ("WMBAA"), CFTC Chair Timothy Massad discussed the transparent trading of swaps transactions on regulated platforms. Chair Massad stated that regulated platforms "can bring greater integrity to the trading process and can facilitate straight-through-processing," adding that more work needs to be done, and that the CFTC is working to fine-tune its rules. In a separate statement, Commissioner Giancarlo suggested that the worldwide swaps marketplace has "started to

FINRA issued a regulatory notice requesting comments on a proposal to identify over-the-counter ("OTC") trades in NMS stocks that are reported more than two seconds after trade execution as "out of sequence" and not last-sale eligible for public dissemination purposes. FINRA believes that the proposal will reduce the likelihood of out-of-sequence trades being misconstrued, and will also increase the reliability of the transaction-reporting stream, which will help investors to understand the market conditions that prevail at the time of the execution of orders. Comments must be received by

FINRA issued a Regulatory Notice requesting comments on a proposal to reduce the synchronization tolerance for computer clocks. FINRA is proposing to reduce the tolerance from one second to 50 milliseconds. The tolerance for mechanical time-stamping devices would remain at one second. Comments must be submitted by January 9, 2015. S ee: FINRA Regulatory Notice 14-47.