Posts belonging to Category A General Overview



Investors are Gorging on Junk Bonds

 

Prices of “junk” bonds keep rising as investors continue to buy the riskier debt.  Yields on junk bonds, which move inversely to bond prices, settled at a record low of 5.56% recently.  Demand for junk bonds is part of the yield-seeking behavior recommended by advisers to many fixed income investors, as they venture further out […]

Financial Crimes – How Should We Deal With Them?

 

Has the government gone too far in ignoring financial criminal conduct? Is the United States operating under an unspoken policy to refrain from prosecuting large financial institutions even if they believe criminal laws were violated? Are the regulators afraid that doing so might damage the economy? Those questions were raised in a recent Wall Street […]

Structured Products Pose Major Risks for Investors

 

Danger lies ahead for investors in structured products. Structured products were once used only by institutions and sophisticated investors that had the education, training and experience needed to fully understand these complex and opaque alternative investments.  Over the past several years, however, structured products have been sold to individual investors, who do not understand the […]

Some Warning Signs of Elder Financial Abuse

 

Financial exploitation of the elderly is a serious and growing problem that has affected, and sometimes devastated, many lives. We hear most often about exploitation by scam artists who are, at least initially, strangers to the victim. What may come as a shock is the fact that exploitation by trusted family members and others close […]

Affinity Frauds Continue to Victimize Investors

 

Affinity fraud cases continue increase. Investors should be particularly careful when dealing with financial advisers with whom they share a common characteristic or interest. While that may sound counterintuitive, affinity fraud, which is based on such commonalities, has devastated many trusting investors. The affinity often involves something that has been an object of discrimination ? […]

Should Investors Use a Stockbroker as their Portfolio Manager?

 

The stockbroker to portfolio manager trend has been going on for several years and can carry significant risks for investors. (See InvestmentNews, “I’m a rep, I’m a PM, too”). In most broker-as-portfolio-manager programs, the broker has complete discretion to purchase and sell securities (i.e., manage the account) like an investment advisory representative, restricted only by […]

Page Perry Partner Robert Terry Appointed Receiver of Summit Wealth Management

 

Page Perry partner Robert D. Terry has been appointed as Receiver in an enforcement action filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. The SEC requested the court to appoint Mr. Terry as Receiver for the estate of Summit Wealth Management, Inc. and other affiliated entities that are defendants […]

SEC Sues Another Atlanta Investment Adviser for Fraud

 

The SEC has filed a civil action against Atlanta-based Summit Wealth Management Inc. and its president Angelo A. Alleca charging them with fraud resulting in the loss of over $17 million of investors’ money. The suit seeks an order freezing the defendants’ assets, an order appointing a receiver and an order requiring an accounting of […]

Supervisory Failures on the Increase at Broker-Dealers

 

State regulators continue to see an increase in supervisory failures at broker-dealers, according to a review of 236 exams conducted in the first half of this year. In addition to failure to follow written supervisory policies, the top 5 violations involve unsuitability of investments, misleading and/or unmonitored correspondence and e-mail sent to customers, failure to […]

SEC Study: ‘Most U.S. Retail Investors Lack Basic Financial Literacy’

 

The SEC has found that most investors understand very little about the financial products they buy. In the wake of the financial crisis, Congress, suspecting that the financial illiteracy of ordinary investors played a role in the crisis, commissioned a study by the SEC as part of the Dodd-Frank mandate. The SEC has completed its […]