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During the past nine years of a rising stock market, investors have juiced their gains by buying on margin. Buyer beware, those gains could be wiped out in an instant. The amount of money at risk is staggering. Retail and institutional investors have borrowed a record $642.8 billion against their […]
You have probably heard a lot about Bitcoin by now, and you’ve likely even read some stories about Bitcoin millionaires – some of whom are regular people, and even teenagers, who figured out how to mine Bitcoin or who got into this cryptocurrency investment early when coins cost almost nothing. […]
When Puerto Rico filed for bankruptcy in May of 2017, investors holding the island territory’s municipal bonds lost what little hope they may have had to recover their investment losses. Since then, Puerto Rico’s financial situation has only gotten worse – due in part to the devastation caused by Hurricane […]
Two new rules the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) adopted last year with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approval took effect on February 5, 2018. According to FINRA’s Chief Legal Officer, the changes are intended to “provide firms with tools to respond more quickly and effectively to protect seniors and […]
Earlier this month, a lawyer in Denver, Colorado pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud as a result of her role in a nationwide pump-and-dump scheme that reportedly swindled $20 million from approximately 12,000 investors, “many of whom are retirees who lost their life savings.” The lawyer’s guilty plea follows […]
For individual investors who have lost money due to account churning, unsuitable investment advice, overconcentration and other forms of investment fraud, filing for arbitration with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is the primary means of recovering fraudulent investment losses. Recently, FINRA published a Discussion Paper which highlights some noteworthy […]
Mom and Pop retail investors, known on Wall Street as “dumb money”, are always the last ones to the party. That holds especially true today. In the case of the recent stock market crash, the dumb money retail investors are the ones getting crushed. After sitting in fear on the […]
Regular readers of this blog know that a U.S. government appointed board is struggling to restructure Puerto Rico’s $73 billion in public debt and $50 billion in pension obligations. That’s why it was such a surprise for Puerto Rico to reveal in December that it was sitting on almost $7 […]
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regularly issues Investor Alerts warning of trends in investment fraud scams and other particular concerns for individual investors. Recently, the SEC published an alert highlighting the risks of making investment decisions based solely upon celebrity endorsements. According to the agency: “Celebrities, from movie stars […]
For individual investors, the risk of losing money to corporate fraud and fraudulent investment scams is a very real concern. While some fraudulent schemes target individual investors generally, many focus on bilking funds from investors who are considered to be particularly vulnerable to fraud. In one recent example, the Financial […]