Securities Litigation

SEC Commissioners Piwowar and Gallagher dissented from a recent Commission Opinion sanctioning an investment adviser's use of misleading historical data purporting to validate an asset-allocation model. Agreeing there was a violation, Piwowar and Gallagher nevertheless dissented, criticizing "rulemaking by opinion:"

Instead, the majority opinion creates from whole cloth specific requirements for advertisements that include the word "backtest." Despite the lack of any statutory or regulatory definition of what constitutes a "backtest," the majority opinion ...