Daniel M. Porush, executive vice president of Stratton, said on Friday that the S.E.C. investigation "has had zero effect on the operation of the firm, and we do not anticipate it having any impact on the firm or its stocks." He added: "They're entitled to look. I don't know what they're looking for."

The S.E.C. does not comment on such things, but the existence of the investigation was disclosed in January in a Stratton prospectus for IPS Health Care, which operates mobile magnetic resonance imaging centers.

The prospectus, in an uncommon departure from most initial public offerings, reported, "The company has been advised by the underwriter that the Securities and Exchange Commission has issued an order directing a private investigation by the staff of the S.E.C. in order to review certain sales and trading activities and practices of the underwriter not involving the company." No specific charges have been levied, the document continued, and Stratton Oakmont will "cooperate fully" with the S.E.C.

Incidently, the prospectus also reported that Todd W. Skulte, the president of IPS Health Care, was censured by the S.E.C. in May 1988, when he was treasurer of Strategic Financial Planning, a financial advisory firm. The complaint was that he did not keep accurate records, thereby "aiding and abetting" the firm's violations of various provisions of the Investment Advisers Act.

The market's response to this pedigree? IPS Health Care started trading at just under $8 a share and soared to $10.25 in just five months; it now trades at about $6.50 a share.

More recently, there was Ropak Laboratories, which came to market via Stratton Oakmont in May. The Ropak prospectus also disclosed the S.E.C. inquiry but with an added caveat: "An unfavorable resolution of the S.E.C. investigation," it said, "could have the effect of limiting the underwriter's ability to make a market in the company's securities."

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And did potential investors read this and run? No, Ropak's shares came public at $4.50 and zoomed to $9.25 a share in less than four months, before subsiding to $8.50 a share. But even today's prices are a boon to the lucky people who owned warrants to buy Ropak's stock at $2.25 to $4 a share, of course.

The Ropak warrant holders include two men -- Harvey Bibicoff, a Hollywood executive, and Gerald L. Cohn, a director of Hazleton National Bank in Hazleton, Pa. -- who seem to pop up in many Stratton deals.

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Mr. Cohn is an big investor in IPS Health Care and arranged for it to get financing through the Hazleton bank. He is also a director of the DVI Financial Corporation, which leases equipment to IPS Health Care and raises money through Stratton. DVI's shares traded at less than $9 last October and almost doubled to $14.125 in March, before drifting back to $8.60 recently.

Mr. Bibicoff, too, is an investor in IPS and was an early investor in DVI Financial. But his starring role is as chairman of the Ventura Entertainment Group, a television production company, which sold shares through Stratton last year.

A careful reader of that prospectus, dated May 31, 1990, might have noticed a regulatory flag. Ventura disclosed that the S.E.C. was seeking information about, among other things, "the relationships between the company's principal stockholders and certain underwriters and market makers of the company's securities."

In February, while already negotiating with the N.A.S.D., Judicate announced that it had hired Stratton, which was already under S.E.C. scrutiny, to raise money through a private placement. Judicate also awarded the brokerage firm a stock option convertible into about a 10 percent stake in the company and has engaged some of its executives as employees and consultants to help develop Judicate's own telemarketing sales effort.

"I needed people who have expertise in closing sales on the phone -- a telemarketing department," said Jay D. Seid, president of Judicate. "There is a talent there."

Mr. Seid continued: "If the S.E.C. is indeed investigating their sales practices, presumably that is because there are standards and rules that are required to be followed in the securities industry. Those rules are different from what my operation is about; the consulting services and assistance I am deriving has nothing to do with selling practices, but with building a sales structure."

Mr. Seid added, however, that if Judicate were asked to mediate an investor's dispute against Stratton Oakmont, he would refuse. "There is no way we could handle an investor mediation case arising from Stratton Oakmont," he said. "That is clear."