Articles Tagged with investment-loss recovery

As an investor, risks are things you have to take into account. Before every investment decision, you need to assess potential risks and recognize ways to mitigate them. While its true that some securities and assets may have more associated risks than others, there is one they all share: the risk of fraud.

However, while you may be able to account for fraud risks, sometimes they can prove tough to disarm and avoid. Even the shrewdest of investors have been victimized by investment scams. The fact is, fraud can be tricky. Scammers have a lot of tools in their arsenal to dupe investors and, unfortunately, they can be quite cunning.

That’s why investment losses happen.

You know that stock investing comes with risks. Along with anticipated risks associated with the nature of stock trading, you also face risks associated with fraud. Some of the most widespread forms of stock fraud are carried out through fraudulent stock promotions.

What Are Fraudulent Stock Promotions?

In fraudulent stock promotion scams, fraudsters hype a certain stock to generate investor buzz. Once a buy frenzy occurs, fraudsters will quickly sell off their shares, leaving investors to take the hit.

If you’re a senior investor, you’ve likely been planning and saving for years to build your portfolio. You have rightfully earned everything you have accrued over the years and you deserve to realize the fruits of that labor in your golden years.

Unfortunately, your nest egg marks you as a target for investment fraud. Scammers like to prey on what they consider “easy targets” – those without the means to defend or protect themselves against investment fraud. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has regularly cited senior investor scams as a chronic fraud issue. Most recently, the SEC has pointed to Ponzi schemes as a major vehicle for perpetrating investment fraud against seniors.

Ponzi Schemes Targeting Seniors

Understanding Cybersecurity Risks
In today’s digital age, the use of technology to facilitate investments has become largely commonplace. We can see many examples of how investing has moved to the cyber-realm from online investing platforms to robo-advisers. While this has greatly empowered investors to take more direct control over their investment strategy, it has also increased the potential vulnerability to cyber fraud and theft.
“In a digitally connected world, cybersecurity presents ongoing risks and threats to our capital markets and to companies operating in all industries, including public companies…”

Industry watchdogs turn their focus on Wells’ wealth-management services

It seems that we may not have yet seen the end of the Wells Fargo accounts scandal. The Justice Department has taken an increased interest in Wells Fargo’s wealth-management unit following whistle-blower claims that the bank’s wealth-management customers have been affected.

According to a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article, the Justice Department ordered Wells Fargo to conduct an investigation into the bank’s own wealth-management business, in response to claims of unfair practices. The investigation into any potential wrong-doing is the first focused on services offered by Wells Fargo outside banking, namely its financial and investment advisory business.

Bitcoin – Big Coin – Bitcoin – Big Coin…

Read that over a few times. Are those two words beginning to sound similar?

That’s what the founders of My Big Coin, Inc. were hoping when they created their cryptocurrency investment offering. The Nevada-based company has been accused of defrauding investors hoping to cash-in on the recent investment trend.

Investor Tips: A Year in Review

With a new year upon us, we thought we’d look back at the most popular questions investors have been asking over the past year. Here are the most popular investor tips for 2017:

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)

Stock ratings are offered by many investment banking groups as a simple way for investors to judge the value of a stock or security. In addition to rating a value of a security, stock ratings typically provide an answer to the question all investors ask: Is it time to buy or sell?

In the case of the recent Citigroup fiasco, investors got mixed messages from the investment bank.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) recently slapped Citigroup with $11.5 million in fines for providing investors with erroneous stock ratings. FINRA’s sanctions find that the investment bank’s faulty stock ratings go back four years. In addition to $5.5 million in fines, Citigroup must also pay out at least $6 million to investors as compensation for investment losses.

If you’ve looked into hiring an investment adviser or advisory firm to help manage your investments, you may have seen some offer various advisory services bundled together under one comprehensive fee. These types of service fees are called wrap fees and are offered as sponsored packages by many advisory firms.

With wrap fee programs, your advisor or firm serves as the “sponsor” for the program; essentially the liaison between you and your service offerings. Typically, the fee for these types of programs is determined by the overall value of your investment account. While it may seem easy enough on your end to just pay one flat fee for a bundling of advisory services, there are things you need to watch for when considering wrap fee programs.

Understanding Wrap Fees

There’s been chatter recently among economic experts that federal rate hikes would likely soon be on the way. Since 2016, the Federal Reserve has risen interest rates three times, but they’ve not not made any definitive announcements on the further hikes, leaving it open to speculation when they’d actually be introduced.

It appears that economists and experts have now been able to reach a consensus. In fact, it appears that the recent Senate tax reform bill passed on Friday may have forced the Fed’s hand. In a recent article, Reuters reports that the recent legislation has forced a shift in risk-forecasting; toward a need for higher federal rate hikes and sooner.

According to the article, experts are projecting three rate hikes between now and 2019. This is actually in accordance with the Fed’s own projections, however the reasoning is up for debate.

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