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As an individual investor, high-yield bonds certainly sound tempting. A higher interest rate without the ups and downs of the stock market — who doesn’t want that? However, as with most investments, there is more to high-yield bonds than meets the eye. For individual investors, these can be extremely risky […]
Brokers who pitched energy based structured products during the recent oil boom to conservative clients will be flooded with phone calls from angry clients. As the price of oil has crashed from $100 a barrel less than two years ago to below $30 on Thursday, investors who bought structured products […]
Junk bonds are back. A type of high-yield security that involves loaning money to a non-investment-grade company, “junk bonds” got their name because they are also extremely high-risk for both institutional and individual investors. While some bonds are junk from the beginning, others can become junk bonds when a company […]
During the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush famously called Al Gore’s budget plan “fuzzy math.” Bush said Gore promised too much and couldn’t pay for what government programs he had planned. The notion of “fuzzy math” is particularly appropriate today when discussing Puerto Rico’s $72 billion ticking time bomb […]
Among its many provisions, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) provides protections for two classes of individuals in particular. These are (i) employees who suffer investment losses due to improper conduct, and (ii) employees who report companies’ misconduct (known as “whistleblowers”) leading to investment losses. ERISA is a complex […]
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) protects employees who invest their retirement savings through their employers. Among its many requirements, ERISA requires all employers to act in their employees’ best interests when managing their 401(k) accounts, pensions and other retirement assets. At Zamansky LLC, we regularly investigate ERISA violations, […]
A little more than a year ago in December 2014, this blog cautioned investors to beware falling oil and gasoline prices. One area of concern at the time was an investment called a “master limited partnership”, or MLP. We cautioned that investors in MLPs ran the risk of getting crushed. […]
Do you know how much of your 401(k) investment income gets paid to service providers? If you are like most employees with a 401(k) plan, you have no idea. Unfortunately, your employer and the companies that provide services under your plan know this, and some of them may be using […]
On December 2, we announced our investigation of an apparent fraud scheme involving a promissory note broker in New Jersey. This marks our fifth active investigation into potential investor frauds across the United States and in Puerto Rico. These schemes have each cost investors many millions of dollars. This article […]
In the movie the ‘Big Short,’ a group of savvy traders in 2005 and 2006 saw the early signs of the collapse of the U.S. subprime market, weathered the storm and ultimately profited handsomely. Many recent buyers of Puerto Rico bonds, mostly hedge funds, scooped them up at rock bottom […]