If you find yourself in the unfortunate position of having lost a lot of money in your brokerage account, you may not be sure why it happened or you may suspect or know that it’s your broker’s fault. Assuming you become certain you have a valid claim – and how you do that is the …
We have a new Variable Universal Life (VUL) insurance case in the office, and it comes at a time when lots of people seem to be searching for information about variable insurance products and variable annuities. This case involves New York Life, as did our last case, but there are plenty of other carriers who …
If you’re a holder of VelocityShares 2x Long VIX Short Term Exchange Traded Notes (“TVIX”), managed by Credit Suisse Group AG, you’re all too aware that TVIX recently plunged off a cliff. But you may not have understood exactly what you owned, how it was supposed to work, or how risky it could be. The …
In law, the term “expungement” refers to a court-ordered process in which the legal record of an arrest or a criminal conviction is “sealed” or erased in the eyes of the law. For most purposes, someone checking the criminal records will find no evidence of the expunged crime. But the concept of expungement isn’t solely …
We’ve told you in a prior post about BrokerCheck, FINRA’s portal to background information concerning brokerage firms and their registered representatives. FINRA provides information on brokers who are currently registered with FINRA or who have been registered within the last 10 years. A free summary report is delivered immediately online and provides: A listing of the broker’s …
By now, the NYT op-ed resignation letter of Greg Smith, a former Goldman Sachs employee, has made the rounds on Twitter and the Blogosphere. In an act of professional suicide, Smith has scathingly indicted Goldman for its rancid ethics, declaring that “the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it,” …
Cliches become cliches in large part because they resonate with truth. Here’s one of the best known cliches in all of investing. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Most investors know that an investment’s return usually is commensurate with its risk. As a general proposition, higher return is accompanied by …
Did you know that FINRA publishes disciplinary actions issued during 2006 or later, as well as opinions issued by the SEC and federal appellate courts that relate to FINRA disciplinary actions that have been appealed? You can find them by searching the FINRA Disciplinary Actions Online database – http://disciplinaryactions.finra.org/ – using any combination of the following criteria: Case …
On July 9, 2012, two new FINRA rules are supposed to take effect: Rule 2090 (“know-your customer”) and Rule 2111 (“suitability rule”). The know-your-customer and suitability rules are probably the second and third most important self-regulatory rules governing the conduct of stockbrokers. (The MOST important rule is the unwritten “prime directive” – keep selling, boys …
State governments generally have separate departments regulating securities and insurance. An article by Bruce Kelly in Investment News reminds us that when stockbrokers get tossed out of the securities industry for fraud or other sales abuses, they often keep their insurance licenses. This means that the agent selling you life insurance or annuities may be a crocodile …
A few years ago, we had a lot of cases involving an investment disguised and regulated as an insurance product: the “equity indexed annuity,” or EIA. We don’t hear much these days about equity indexed annuities. Why? Because the product was so justly maligned that the insurance industry decided to re-brand it to make it …
Wall Street has a penchant for taking relatively simple products and molding them into complex portfolio killers. Witness the mutation of exchange traded funds or ETFs. Their scary offspring? Little monsters known as leveraged and inverse ETFs. In their simple form, ETFs are usually registered investment companies whose shares represent an interest in a portfolio of securities that track an underlying …
