Unscrupulous Practices on the Securities Market Using Modern Technologies

The purpose of this work is to study the sufficiency of current legislative regulation in the field of countering certain unfair practices in the securities market committed using modern technologies, as well as to identify the possibility of constructing effective compliance in this area. Among the unfair practices, the possibility of which is provided by the use of modern technologies, the author analyzes the following: dissemination through social networks and messengers (in particular, Telegram) of false or misleading information about financial assets, as well as the influence on the market performance of assets by influencers with the assist of their audience; unfair actions of the authors of auto-following strategies; using trading robots to implement the "spoofing" strategy. Based on the results of the study, the author concludes that there is no legislative regulation in Russia prohibiting most of the above unfair practices. Accordingly, the provisions of the legislation establishing mandatory measures to construct an internal control (compliance) system in organizations participating in the securities market in the field of countering market abuses also do not apply to such practices. In the conditions of the revealed legislative gap, bona fide participants in the securities market are forced to use the tools of soft law and local rulemaking, however, taking into account their inherent features, the author of the work concludes that they are ineffective compared with norms of law. Nevertheless, due to the negative attitude towards formally legitimate unfair practices that has matured in the financial community and the Bank of Russia, it is highly likely that legislative prohibitions will be established against them in the near future. Therefore, for the purpose of a smoother perception of such prohibitions, the author considers the initiatives of securities market participants to create soft law norms and local regulations reasonable and worthy of support.