Bad Products & Services Category

Like everything else there are good investment products and there are bad investment products. For example, some mutual funds are rated five stars and some have no stars. Some products are investor-friendly and some make a lot of money for companies and advisors. Your key for growing your assets is to know the critical differences before you invest in them.

By: Matthew Arndt, CFA, CPA, CFP | January 24, 2012 | Bad Products & Services, Investor Information

You may not realize this, but if you own mutual funds in your portfolio then you may be paying substantial fees to each mutual fund manager every year, in addition to an annual advisory fee to your investment advisor (An advisor simultaneously collecting both a commission and an advisory fee on the same portfolio is [...]

By: Jack WaymirecloseAuthor: Jack Waymire Name: Jack Waymire
Email: jack@InvestorWatchdog.com
Site: http://www.investorwatchdog.com
About: Jack entered the financial services industry as an institutional consultant and later as vice president at Warburg, Paribas, Becker in 1976. From 1983 to 2003 he was the President of Lexington Capital Management and related companies. In December, 2003 John Wiley published his book "Who's Watching Your Money? The 17 Paladin Principles for Selecting a Financial Advisor". In 2004, he founded PaladinRegistry.com, a website that educated investors about financial advisors. A national Registry of pre-screened, five star rated advisors was added to the website later in 2004. In 2009, he founded InvestorWatchdog.com, a website that provides tools and information to investors who use the services of financial planners and financial advisors. Since 2004, Jack has been frequently quoted in the media on topics about financial advisors, Wall Street firms, investment scams, and the financial services industry (BusinessWeek, Forbes, Kiplinger, Washington Post, etc.).See Authors Posts (59) | December 14, 2011 | Bad Financial Advice, Bad Products & Services, Deceptive Sales Practices, Ponzi Schemes

Everyone has read about illegal Ponzi schemes and Wall Street’s fraudulent investment scams that have resulted in major fines to companies.
What you don’t read about are legal investment scams that impact millions of investors. Following are examples of frequent abuses.
Definition: Legal scams benefit the advisor or the advisor’s company more than they benefit you.
Advisors sell [...]

By: Jack WaymirecloseAuthor: Jack Waymire Name: Jack Waymire
Email: jack@InvestorWatchdog.com
Site: http://www.investorwatchdog.com
About: Jack entered the financial services industry as an institutional consultant and later as vice president at Warburg, Paribas, Becker in 1976. From 1983 to 2003 he was the President of Lexington Capital Management and related companies. In December, 2003 John Wiley published his book "Who's Watching Your Money? The 17 Paladin Principles for Selecting a Financial Advisor". In 2004, he founded PaladinRegistry.com, a website that educated investors about financial advisors. A national Registry of pre-screened, five star rated advisors was added to the website later in 2004. In 2009, he founded InvestorWatchdog.com, a website that provides tools and information to investors who use the services of financial planners and financial advisors. Since 2004, Jack has been frequently quoted in the media on topics about financial advisors, Wall Street firms, investment scams, and the financial services industry (BusinessWeek, Forbes, Kiplinger, Washington Post, etc.).See Authors Posts (59) | December 7, 2011 | Bad Products & Services, Wall Street Ethics, Wall Street Scams, Who Can I Trust?

Wall Street companies cheat investors to maximize earnings, share prices, and executive bonuses.
When they are caught, companies pay fines to make the problem go away.
The latest example is Citigroup’s agreement to pay a $285 million fine to settle an SEC action that stated it sold investors $1 billion of a CDO then bet against the [...]

By: Jack WaymirecloseAuthor: Jack Waymire Name: Jack Waymire
Email: jack@InvestorWatchdog.com
Site: http://www.investorwatchdog.com
About: Jack entered the financial services industry as an institutional consultant and later as vice president at Warburg, Paribas, Becker in 1976. From 1983 to 2003 he was the President of Lexington Capital Management and related companies. In December, 2003 John Wiley published his book "Who's Watching Your Money? The 17 Paladin Principles for Selecting a Financial Advisor". In 2004, he founded PaladinRegistry.com, a website that educated investors about financial advisors. A national Registry of pre-screened, five star rated advisors was added to the website later in 2004. In 2009, he founded InvestorWatchdog.com, a website that provides tools and information to investors who use the services of financial planners and financial advisors. Since 2004, Jack has been frequently quoted in the media on topics about financial advisors, Wall Street firms, investment scams, and the financial services industry (BusinessWeek, Forbes, Kiplinger, Washington Post, etc.).See Authors Posts (59) | October 20, 2011 | Bad Products & Services

Brett Arends for MarketWatch said “How about those investors who got suckered by Wall Street this year in the disastrous initial public offerings of closed-end mutual funds. Their investments have been absolutely massacred by fees and poor performance.”
Thomas Herzfeld, who’s been following closed-end funds for decades, says “the losses are the worst he can ever [...]

By: Jack WaymirecloseAuthor: Jack Waymire Name: Jack Waymire
Email: jack@InvestorWatchdog.com
Site: http://www.investorwatchdog.com
About: Jack entered the financial services industry as an institutional consultant and later as vice president at Warburg, Paribas, Becker in 1976. From 1983 to 2003 he was the President of Lexington Capital Management and related companies. In December, 2003 John Wiley published his book "Who's Watching Your Money? The 17 Paladin Principles for Selecting a Financial Advisor". In 2004, he founded PaladinRegistry.com, a website that educated investors about financial advisors. A national Registry of pre-screened, five star rated advisors was added to the website later in 2004. In 2009, he founded InvestorWatchdog.com, a website that provides tools and information to investors who use the services of financial planners and financial advisors. Since 2004, Jack has been frequently quoted in the media on topics about financial advisors, Wall Street firms, investment scams, and the financial services industry (BusinessWeek, Forbes, Kiplinger, Washington Post, etc.).See Authors Posts (59) | January 10, 2011 | Bad Products & Services, Financial Advisors

What does it mean to investors when Merrill Lynch tells its 15,000 stockbrokers they must produce at least $250,000 of annual revenue or they will be fired?
Merrill Lynch brokers have two major choices to make. First is whether they do what is best for their clients or do they do what it takes to save [...]

By: Jack WaymirecloseAuthor: Jack Waymire Name: Jack Waymire
Email: jack@paladinregistry.com
Site: http://paladinregistry.com
About: Jack writes for the InvestorWatchdog website and Worth magazine. He worked in the financial services industry from 1976 to 2004. For twenty of those years he was the president of a Registered Investment Advisory firm and a Broker/Dealer. Jack is the author of Who's Watching Your Money? The 17 Paladin Principles for Selecting a Financial Advisor and is a co-founder of PaladinRegistry.com.See Authors Posts (87) | December 7, 2009 | Bad Financial Advice, Bad Products & Services

You have read hundreds of stories describing Ponzi schemes and other illegal investment scams. But, investor losses from those scams are a drop in the bucket compared to legal investment scams.
Legal scams are perpetrated by unscrupulous, licensed advisors who deliberately sell bad investment products that benefit them or their companies. An example of a bad [...]