Longhorn Investment Team Presents: What Happened?

You’ve probably been asking yourself “why didn’t I hear from Longhorn Investment Team all July?” We have answers.

Bad News: We were tragically bulldozed by an authoritarian regulatory body and their corporate cronies for four weeks.

Good News: We’re back baby!

The Long Answer: It all started on a sweltering summer day inside the “mission control room” of an air-conditioned corporate office belonging to an unnamed financial services behemoth. In that room, one of our writers was “working” as an intern in their Investor Services department. Knowing that God came first, family came second, and LIT came third, our writer attempted to ask managers, employees, and even the kitchen staff for interviews to publish in the Weekly Insight.

Big mistake, bubba. Just for mentioning the Weekly Insight in these interview requests, our writer was sent to compliance – a word that the Deutsche Bank guys still screech at the thought of. You see, affiliates of any FINRA* member organization can’t just engage in OBA’s* willy-nilly. Approval from compliance must be obtained!

FINRA* = Financial Industry Regulatory Authority

That’s right, these jabronis don’t even have a word that starts with N in their acronym, and they are the clowns who govern this business? Unforgivable. In short, FINRA regulates any company that’s part of the finance industry including the unnamed broker-dealer.

OBA* = Outside Business Activity

Outside business activities are any extracurricular hobbies that could pose a conflict of interest with your job. For example, a blog about investing could theoretically fall into this category and be subject to approval from the firm (even though this blog doesn’t represent said firm in any way).

Back to the story! The writer submitted his OBA form to compliance. Compliance messaged the intern manager, “you up?” to which the manager replied, “yeh” to which compliance responded, “yeh so this blog is ok but definitely read it bc idk if there’s gonna be any wack posts in the future”

At this point, the drama intensifies. The manager faces a decision: that person could read the blog on an ongoing basis and allow it to be posted OR that person could just say the blog is an invalid OBA and not have to read it. That person chose the latter, and the Weekly Insight was cutoff. Nobody was allowed to crank out another issue.

An uproar ensued. The writer cried and cried, but he couldn’t win any sympathy points. He wallowed on the bathroom floor (his girlfriend had also just broken up with him) as he howled a howl of pain and sorrow.

But that dark chapter in LIT history has passed! We’re back, and we have some stories to cover. So, get ready for the hottest August in years because we’ll be back with some major updates. Plus, we’d love to catch up! Feel free to tell us about your most tragic moment from the summer. Message us on Facebook or reach out on our website. You can Instagram DM us, but that is weird.

See you tomorrow!