Back in September I reported on charges the National Futures Association brought against Vision Financial Markets and commodity trading advisor ACE Investment Strategists and its founder Yu-Dee Chang regarding ACE’s programs. ACE was charged with misappropriating net trade break credits and unallocated cash residuals, “which rightfully belonged to customers,” to the tune of $2.1 million. Vision was charged with failure to supervise among other charges related to its supervision of ACE.

In what only can be described as an act of supreme chutzpah or proof that Chang had become completely separated from reality; he then sent out a marketing letter to brokers encouraging them to raise assets for ACE.

Despite most of his programs performing extremely poorly in 2013, Chang touted recent (20-day) performance in pushing brokers to raise money. Fortunately friends in the industry forwarded that letter on to me, which in the end may pile on to Yu-Dee’s troubles.

Oddly enough there was not a lot of follow-up on my story of Vision and Chang. And I am talking about both the recent charges brought by the NFA and my original story back in 2005 on how Vision had constructed an extremely steep fee structure and promoted ACE very aggressively based on a performance history that was built with basically no money under management.

I further pointed out that despite this information being out in the public domain,  Chang had managed to become somewhat of a celebrity analyst making frequent guest appearances on the Fox Business Network and CNBC.

Somehow Chang was accepted at face value as an expert without much of a check on his history, which included several programs basically blowing up in 2008. And Chang actually made an appearance on Fox Business News after these charges were filed!

Now I pointed out how a recent Bloomberg story was unfair in its characterization of managed futures. I find that ACE’s longevity is a bit more disturbing than any of the revelations in the Bloomberg story. But it was clear that Bloomberg and other mainstream media outlets aren’t interested in understanding the space and are basically fed information from sources with their own agenda.

How is it that Chang can build a speaking career without either FOX or CNBC asking a few questions?

While the NFA investigated and uncovered the most recent allegations, it was industry players who first brought to my attention the outrageous fee structure Vision was charging potential ACE investors. It was an introducing broker who said I would not charge a customer this fee and believe this offering material may be in violation of NFA rules. Likewise it was an introducing broker who brought to my attention the fact that Chang was aggressively attempting to raise assets even after the NFA charges were filed.

Perhaps the general business media should attempt to learn about futures and managed futures, build sources within the space instead of relying on the securities world and so called investment experts for all its information.