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Our experts frequently write blog posts about the findings of the research we are conducting.

Displaying 10 out of 61 results for "Equity Indexed Annuities".

UBS's Yield Enhancement Strategy ("YES") Returns - and then the Losses - Were Caused by Equity Market Exposure

(Oct 2019)

UBS marketed YES as market-neutral based on a combination of four options is sometimes referred to as an "Iron Condor". UBS accounts subjected to YES treatment suffered losses of 12% to 14% in December 2018 when the S&P 500 dropped 9.2% because the overlay was more than 100%.

In this paper the authors we explain the option basics necessary to understand the YES strategy and illustrate how UBS actually implemented the strategy with predictably disastrous results. They also present how UBS...

YES Strategies: Know to say no

(May 2019)

In recent years, low yields in the bond market and low volatility in the equity markets have combined to give brokerage firms the excuse to develop and sell "Yield Enhancement Strategies (YES)" to retail investors. These strategies almost always consist of selling options on the S&P 500. The sale of an option garners a premium but places the seller (the retail investor) in a short option position. Being short on a call or put option is a risky place to be. In the best-case scenario, the...

Investors "Strangled" by LJM Preservation and Growth Fund (LJMIX)

(Feb 2018)

The stock market began the month of February on a roller-coaster. During the 6 trading days from Friday, February 2nd to Friday, February 9th, the Dow Jones Industrials had intraday swings of at least 330 points each day. On four of those six days the Dow incurred 1,000 point swings.

Amidst the dramatic market swings two weeks ago, the LJM Preservation and Growth Fund stands out. The Fund plummeted over 80% (from a price of $10.34 to $1.94) in two days. See Figure 1.

Figure 1. LJM Preservation...

Non-Traded REIT Conflicts Run Amok: VRM I, VRM II and MVP, MVP II

(Apr 2017)

Introduction

SLCG has written extensively about pervasive conflicts of interest in non-traded REITs arising because a non-traded REIT's sponsor, advisor, selling agents, and major suppliers are often affiliated entities that benefit more from creating the non-traded REIT than from running the REIT profitably. See our blog posts on REITs. SLCG economists have also published peer-reviewed articles on non-traded REITs, including An Empirical Analysis of Non-Traded REITsⁱ.

A collection of...

Things Go From Bad to Worse for BrokerCheck

(Jul 2016)

Last week we posted about two brokers who had not disclosed that customer complaints had been adjudicated to arbitration awards in favor of the clients but rather continued to report them as pending up to 15 months after the arbitration award was rendered. See Bad Brokers Falsify Their BrokerCheck Records and No One Notices. Two days ago we showed that FINRA corrected these two brokers' BrokerCheck records in Bad Brokers' Incorrect Records Got Partially Corrected Last Week. We'll let you...

A Bad Broker Found His Firm; You Should Avoid Them Both

(Jun 2016)

In June 2016, a FINRA panel in Albuquerque, NM ordered Centaurus Financial, Inc. to pay the Claimant, a recent widow when the subject conduct began, $150,000 plus all hearing fees after reasoned findings that "the investments Hashemian recommended while at Centaurus were not suitable", that Centaurus was responsible for Hashemian's actions which "constituted fraudulent and negligently made misrepresentation and omitted material information in the sale of investments" and that "Centaurus...

Investors Lose Over $7 Billion in SandRidge Energy Stock and Notes

(May 2016)

In recent months, investors have lost billions of dollars as a result of their investments in SandRidge Energy, Inc. stock, notes and bonds. Sandridge is involved in the exploration and production of oil and natural gas in the continental United States with some interests in the Gulf of Mexico.

SandRidge's stock price has lost 99% of its value since 2014, erasing more than $4 billion of market capitalization. In addition to near complete losses to SandRidge stockholders, investors have lost...

Have 1.3% or 7.3% of Stock Brokers Engaged in Misconduct?

(May 2016)

In our recent working paper How Widespread and Predictable is Stock Broker Misconduct? we reconcile estimates of misconduct, demonstrate that broker misconduct is predictable and explain that ostensibly publicly available BrokerCheck data could be used to help investors avoid bad brokers and bad brokerage firms if only it were made truly public instead of only speciously so.

Jason Zweig's recent column in the Wall Street Journal Is Your Broker Good or Bad? discussed our research problem. In...

More Impossible Trade Prices Caused by Auto-liquidators: Option Combinations

(Dec 2015)

In three previous blog posts, we documented how auto-liquidators execute option trades at distorted prices to their clients' detriment. The price distortions are caused by the price impact of large sell or buy orders on thinly traded securities. These distortions were reversed within minutes, but not before causing investors millions of dollars of unnecessary losses.

In "The Recent Market Turmoil Spells Trouble for Auto-liquidators like Interactive Brokers", we showed that thinly traded...

More Non-traded REIT Perfidy: The Roll-up Grift

(Nov 2015)

We have extensively researched non-traded REITs and concluded that these illiquid direct participation programs have cost investors $50 billion compared to more liquid investments in traded REITs. Our Fiduciary Duties and Non-traded REITs provides a good overview of the problems with non-traded REITs and a summary of our empirical results. An Empirical Analysis of Non-Traded REITs contains a more detailed explanation of our research. See our previous blog posts on individual non-traded...

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