Day-Trading Brokerage Is Fined $115,000

A boutique Orange County brokerage that peddled day-trading services to Asian Americans was sanctioned and fined $115,000, and its chairman agreed to be barred permanently from the industry, regulators said. Providential Securities Inc. in Fountain Valley, which came under U.S. Senate scrutiny for alleged day-trading abuses, agreed to the fine to settle numerous charges of violating securities laws and the rules of the National Assn. of Securities Dealers, an industry group with quasi-governmental regulatory powers. Irving M. Einhorn, attorney for Providential’s chairman, Henry Fahman, said the case illustrates the hard line NASD and the Securities and Exchange Commission increasingly have taken against brokers who don’t toe the line. Fahman previously had expressed hope that his parent company, Providential Holdings Inc., could continue in the brokerage business, by acquiring the San Francisco investment firm Holt & Collins, which has no day-trading operations. But his agreement with NASD rules out anything but a passive minority stake in any retail broker-dealer operation.