Can Mgt do anything re: stock manipulation?

[poodlebytes]

Sorry if this has been discussed - but I came across this SA article via StockTwits and thought of our beloved MNKD.

Last September I tallied daily volume (per NASDAQ) and FTDs (per SEC) since the IPO and averaged 25%.  For the last 3 reporting periods FTDs averaged 50% (Feb 01 - Mar 14 2016) - astonishingly EVERY OTHER trade was naked!!  Twitter user @eventrader's numbers put MNKD as #7 in FTDs for 2015!

Since 2Q15 CC Matt had mentioned they are in talks w/SEC of 'possible' stock manipulation but clearly abusive naked shorting goes unabated to this day.
Is there anything they can do such as LIFE? Or closer to home, is there anything we, as shareholders, can do? With the annual shareholder's conference a month away perhaps now is the time to iron this out.

Thoughts?

[BlueCat]

Vote.  And then cross fingers.

[matt]

In a word, no. Actions such as those discussed in the SA article you linked are designed to garner shareholder support, but as a legal matter they will go nowhere. The Supreme Court has held, repeatedly, that shareholders have ONE AND ONLY ONE cause of action under federal securities law, and that is the right to sue the issuer for making materially false or misleading statements in connection with the sale of a security in violation of Section 10(b) of the Securities Act of 1934.  That is why when a company restates earnings or makes a surprisingly bad announcement, the vulture lawyers swoop in and start looking for clients; it is their only chance to bring a lawsuit. All other remedies under the securities law are reserved exclusively to the SEC so that is agency you have to petition if you have a grievance.

The SEC probably should bring more enforcement actions, but you cannot do the simple math you have done and conclude that 50% of all trades resulted in a FTD.  The way the Depository Trust handles shares and transfers between brokerages and shares going between certificates and street name is mind numbingly complex if you are trying to figure out what is really going on. The DTC always get it right, in total, and the shares outstanding always balance with what the company has authorized and issued but there are a lot of moving pieces with the possibility of double counts, triple counts, and quadruple counts on given transactions.  Without reconciling all the underlying data you can't know what is going on and nobody has access to all the data except the SEC.  The NASDAQ doesn't know all the numbers, the transfer agent doesn't know, and MNKD doesn't know and, to make matters more interesting, none of those entities can get their hands on the data even if they wanted to unravel the knot.

Is somebody doing something illegal?  Maybe so, but as a shareholder you can neither prove it nor disprove it.