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Over the past decade, the securities industry has moved from commission based stock brokerage accounts to “fee-based” accounts to curtail “churning” by stockbrokers of their customers’ accounts. Regulators were concerned that brokers who were charging commissions for each trade had an incentive to churn the accounts. The hope was that […]
A mulligan among friendly golfers is a do over or penalty free replay of a bad shot. Weekend duffers in friendly matches give each other do-overs from time to time. Pros like Phil Mickelson, however, do not get mulligans. It’s an unfair advantage which is not legal under the strict […]
The Federal Reserve’s low interest rate policies have pushed investors pursuing returns, or “chasing yield” as it’s known on Wall Street, to buy riskier assets, including junk bonds and penny stocks. Investors are piling into the riskiest corporate bonds, while others are plowing into incredibly risky shares of tiny publicly […]
What does the financial services industry do when sales of an old product fall flat? It rolls out a new version of the product, hoping clients forget the perils of the past. Stripped of benefits, the new VAs are called “investment-only VAs” or “investment-focused VAs.” InvestmentNews noted this month, “A […]
Like a boxer being pummeled and playing rope-a-dope, Puerto Rico keeps taking repeated body blows and is now staggering. The government’s ability to collect taxes is falling further and further behind. According to a report from Bloomberg, Puerto Rico’s Treasury reported that tax revenues for the first ten months of […]
Brokers have been pitching their clients who have been seeking yield, “indexed annuities”, a confusing product which really doesn’t fit the clients’ needs. Indexed annuities, which appear to simulate the returns of stocks, have come under the scrutiny of FINRA according to a report over the weekend by industry newspaper […]
The Nasdaq Stock Market is expected to open the velvet rope of the exclusive Private Equity VIP room to retail investors. In the near future, Mom and Pop investors can turn their hard earned retirement savings over to the big boys at the Carlyle Group, Blackstone and KKR hoping that […]
“A 50-year-old Harlem educator is giving her UBS broker failing grades after she lost $400,000 from her Puerto Rico muni bond fund.” Source: The New York Post Read more
Municipal bonds used to be conservative investments sold to Mom-and-Pop, buy and hold retail investors to put under their mattresses for years or even decades. Muni bonds were sold as stable, long-term investments with the clear advantage of generating tax-free income. That is no longer the case. The $3.5 billion […]
Michael Lewis’s new book “Flash Boys” has exposed high frequency trader networks that jump ahead of stock orders from investors and make tiny profits on hundreds of thousands of trades throughout a routine day on Wall Street. Those tiny trades, executed much more quickly than a blink of an eye, […]