Smiley Bishop & Porter LLP

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TICs That Bite Investors

February 20, 2013 by lmitchum

Smiley Bishop & Porter is pursuing claims against stock brokerage firms that made unsuitable recommendations that their clients invest in tenancy in common (TIC) properties. A TIC is a form of property ownership in which several people individually own an undivided part of an entire income producing property like an office building, warehouse or retail […]

Filed Under: Investment Products Tagged With: 1031 exchange, Atlanta investment fraud attorney, Atlanta Securities arbitration attorney, Atlanta securities fraud lawyer, Atlanta Securities Lawyers, FINRA, tenancy in common, TIC

Reverse Convertible Notes

April 5, 2011 by jordan

Reverse convertible notes are short-term bonds peddled to investors by Wall Street firms. Throughout their term, they pay comparatively high interest rates, but whether they pay back the investor’s principal is the big question. The reason for that question is because a reverse convertible’s principal repayment is linked to the performance of a specific stock […]

Filed Under: Investment Products Tagged With: Investment Fraud Attorney, Reverse Convertible Notes, Securities Arbitration Attorney, Securities Law Firm, Securities Lawyers, Stock Fraud Attorney

Fraudulent and Unsuitable Private Placements

March 25, 2011 by jordan

Under the federal and state securities laws, most securities must be registered with the SEC before they can be solicited or sold to the investing public. In the issuer’s registration statement and in periodic reports filed after a company goes public, the issuer of securities provides detailed financial information which reasonable investors can use to […]

Filed Under: Investment Products Tagged With: Investment Fraud Attorney, Private Placements, Securities Arbitration Attorney, Securities Fraud Lawyer, Securities Law Firm, Securities Lawyers

MAT/ASTA Fund

March 11, 2011 by lmitchum

In 2002, Citigroup’s Smith Barney brokerage unit started marketing six MAT/ASTA hedge funds to its clients. These Citigroup proprietary funds were trusts, which used borrowed money to buy municipal bonds, and were supposed to make profits based on the spread in interest rates between borrowed and invested funds. Total assets in these funds were approximately […]

Filed Under: Investment Products Tagged With: Investment Fraud Attorney, MAT/ASTA, Securities Arbitration Attorney, Securities Fraud Lawyer, Securities Law Firm, Securities Lawyers, Stock Fraud Attorney

Leveraged ETFs

March 8, 2011 by jordan

These Wall Street products take a simple idea and make it way too risky for ninety-nine out of a hundred investors. The simple idea is the Exchange Traded Fund, or ETF. These are index funds. Unlike mutual funds that trade only at the end of the day, ETFs can be bought and sold throughout the […]

Filed Under: Investment Products Tagged With: Investment Fraud Attorney, Leveraged ETF, Securities Arbitration Attorney, Securities Fraud Lawyer, Securities Law Firm, Securities Lawyers, Stock Fraud Attorney

Principal Protected Notes

March 1, 2011 by lmitchum

In “A Short History of Financial Euphoria” the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote, “The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.” Witness then, yet another Wall Street innovation: the Principal Protected Note – aka, the Structured Note. Structured Notes are “IOUs” to […]

Filed Under: Investment Products Tagged With: Investment Fraud Attorney, Principal Protected Notes, Securities Arbitration Attorney, Securities Fraud Lawyer, Securities Law Firm, Securities Lawyers, Stock Fraud Attorney

Auction Rate Securities

February 25, 2011 by lmitchum

For a number of years, stockbrokers told individual and institutional clients with significant cash holdings that there was a safe way to earn a better return than money market funds, without risking a loss of principal. The place to get these returns was in Auction Rate Securities (ARS). It turns out the ARS were not […]

Filed Under: Investment Products Tagged With: Auction Rate Securities, Investment Fraud Attorney, Securities Arbitration Attorney, Securities Fraud Lawyer, Securities Law Firm, Securities Lawyers, Stock Fraud Attorney

Ponzi Schemes

February 15, 2011 by lmitchum

Even in the wake of the “Bernie” Madoff scandal, investors continue to lose billions of dollars in Ponzi schemes. Stripped to its bare bones, a Ponzi scheme is a ploy where a promoter pays one set of investors with money raised from other investors. Ponzi promoters promise investors high returns but offer few details, except […]

Filed Under: Investment Products Tagged With: Investment Fraud Attorney, Ponzi Scheme, Securities Arbitration Attorney, Securities Fraud Lawyer, Securities Law Firm, Securities Lawyers, Stock Fraud Attorney

A Warning About Variable Annuities

February 5, 2011 by lmitchum

Brokers love variable annuities, but most investors should view them as toxic investments. Variable annuities are basically mutual funds contained within a highly expensive insurance “wrapper.” They are attractive to brokers because they offer almost unbelievably high commission payouts which the client never sees, but pay through high annual expenses and large “surrender charges” which […]

Filed Under: Investment Products Tagged With: Investment Fraud Attorney, Securities Arbitration Attorney, Securities Fraud Lawyer, Securities Law Firm, Securities Lawyers, Stock Fraud Attorney, Variable Annuities

Equity Indexed Annuities

January 25, 2011 by lmitchum

Here’s a proposition: Fearful investors provide a ready market for products that sound safe, but aren’t. Exhibit A in support of that proposition? The Equity Indexed Annuity, or EIA. An EIA is an annuity, meaning it’s a contract to pay a guaranteed minimum interest rate, which is then goosed up by aligning the rate it […]

Filed Under: Investment Products Tagged With: Equity Indexed Annuities, Investment Fraud Attorney, Securities Arbitration Attorney, Securities Fraud Lawyer, Securities Law Firm, Securities Lawyers, Stock Fraud Attorney

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"The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version. All financial innovation involves, in one form or another, the creation of debt secured in greater or lesser adequacy by real assets." —John Kenneth Galbraith
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