Posts belonging to Category Closed End Funds



Alternative Investments – Big Problems

 

According to financial advisers, do not be fooled by the recent market in stocks into believing that we are in for a continuing period of sustained low volatility.  Those advisers want you to expect lots of volatility and market corrections and to invest accordingly. In light of the foregoing, investors should adopt alternative investment strategies […]

Alternative Investments – Are They All They Are Cracked Up To Be?

 

Rising interest rates may be death to traditional bonds and bond funds, but a number of alternative investment strategies allegedly designed to protect principal in a rising interest rate environment are springing up to take their place.  It remains to be seen whether they will provide ballast when bond prices fall. For decades, bond investors […]

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 […]

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 […]

Alternative Investments are no Panacea

 

Why do investors continue to be enamored with hedge funds and other alternative investments? The press recently reported that institutional investors are expected to increase allocations to hedge funs by 300% this year, and hedge fund assets are expected to increase by 11% to $2.5 trillion, according to the 11th annual survey of institutional investors […]

Low Yields Push Investors into Very Risky Alternatives

 

The financial world continues to beat the drum warning investors about the risk of bonds.  When interest rates rise (or when the market believes a significant rise in interest rates is imminent) bond prices will fall, and investors in bond funds and individual bonds will suffer declines in value and/or losses.  Retirees and others, who […]

Alternative Investments – Often Tainted by Sales Practice Abuses

 

Investors in search of fixed income have poured money into a variety of alternative investments, including nontraded real estate investment trusts (REITs).  Alternative investments encompass most investments other than traditional stocks and bonds and mutual funds that hold stocks and/or bonds.  There are three basic clusters of problems that investors who are considering these products […]

Alternative Investments Begin to Haunt LPL Financial

 

LPL Financial, the country’s largest independent broker-dealer, is encountering serious problems involving its sales of alternative investments. LPL is also (not coincidentally) one of the country’s largest sellers of alternative investment products. In 2011, LPL sold $758,435,677 of variable annuities (which are considered by most industry observers as being alternative investments) and $110,643,148 of other […]

Today’s ‘Alternative Investments’ Resemble ‘Limited Partnerships’ of the Past

 

Wall Street’s recent promotion of alternative investments should warrant serious concern among investors. It serves as an unpleasant example of history repeating itself. In the mid-1980s, Wall Street firms became enamored with limited partnerships (a form of alternative investment) that invested in so-called hard assets, paid the firms high commissions and fees, were illiquid and […]

Will Alternative Investments Fuel the Next Financial Debacle?

 

Investors are being sold more and more alternative investments and large broker-dealers are ramping up to supply that demand, according to the Wall Street Journal (“Alternatives Get a Boost”). The trouble is that most investors do not fully understand these products and their brokerage firm advisers do not fairly explain the risks and problems associated […]