Decision in brief: Oasis World Trading Inc (Re), Enforcement Proceeding, Merits, July 21, 2026

This enforcement case is about Oasis World Trading Inc., which describes itself as a proprietary day trading firm (a company trading for itself with its own money). More than 600 traders located in China used Oasis’s trading platform to place trades on Canadian and Australian markets through Oasis’s accounts.

The OSC makes four main allegations against Oasis and/or its principals, Zhen (Stephen) Pang and Rikesh Modi:

1. The OSC says that Oasis traded securities without being registered to do so.

   The Tribunal decided that Oasis did not break Ontario securities law by trading without being registered. Oasis did trade securities but it qualified for an exemption from the registration requirement in Ontario securities law. Oasis’s trades were made through a registered dealer, and Oasis – and not the individual traders – was the purchaser and seller of the securities that were traded. Oasis traders traded on Oasis’s behalf with Oasis’s own money, and Oasis did not solicit them to trade.

2. The OSC says that Oasis did not have adequate systems to supervise its traders.

   The Tribunal decided that Oasis did not have adequate systems to supervise and control its trading activity and that this conduct was contrary to the public interest. Oasis had many traders in many different offices who placed a very high number of trades. Oasis’s compliance system did not properly prevent or detect spoofing. Oasis did not adequately oversee its traders and failed to maintain a strong culture of compliance.

3. The OSC says that Oasis gave trading access to unauthorized people.

   The Tribunal decided that Oasis gave trading access to unauthorized traders without first properly identifying them to its executing broker, as it was required to do. Because Pang and Modi were Oasis’s officers and directors and were responsible for its business, the Tribunal decided that they were responsible for Oasis’s conduct.

4. The OSC says that Oasis, Pang and Modi engaged in two types of market manipulation: “spoofing” and “wash trading”.

   “Spoofing” is when a trader places an order that they do not intend to complete, which creates a false impression that there is more interest in buying or selling a security than there really is. That false impression can change the price of the security. The trader then cancels their misleading order and completes a real trade at a better price.

   A “wash trade” happens when the same person or company is effectively both the buyer and seller. Because there is no real change in ownership, the trade can make the market look more active than it is.

   The Tribunal found that Oasis traders repeatedly engaged in spoofing on Canadian and Australian markets. Oasis, Pang and Modi knew or ought to have known that this trading would create a misleading appearance of trading activity or an artificial price. The Tribunal did not find that Pang and Modi were responsible for Oasis’s market manipulation, because they were also found to have engaged in spoofing.

   The Tribunal found that there were more than 10,000 wash trades that were reported to the market as completed trades. However, the respondents did not engage in wash trading. Oasis reasonably relied on its executing broker (the broker that carried out the trades) to stop the wash trades from being reported to the market or cancel them. The OSC did not prove that the respondents knew or ought to have known that the trades were being reported to the market and not cancelled.

As a result of this decision, the Tribunal will hold a hearing to decide what sanctions and costs should be ordered against the respondents because of their conduct.