Financial regulators are confronting investor frauds that are giving retirement savers steep losses on complex products that until a few years ago were aimed only at the most sophisticated investors, writes Nathaniel Popper in a New York Times article from Feb. 11, 2013. These victims are among the millions of Americans whose mutual funds and […]

In a recent Reuters article, they write that FINRA, or The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, is examining major brokerages regarding potential conflicts of interest and financial incentives associated with the sale of complex securities, said the Wall Street regulator's chief. Richard Ketchum, FINRA's chairman and chief executive, said that FINRA is looking "very closely" at […]

The following information is excerpts from the article on the FINRA website.  The fact that a product is “complex” indicates that it presents an additional risk to retail investors because its complexity adds a further dimension to the investment decision process beyond the fundamentals of market forces. This may be the case even though the complexity […]

In an article for InvestmentNews.com, November 9th., 2011, Mark Schoeff Jr. writes that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) engaged in an unprecedented crackdown on investment advisers over the last year, contributing to an overall surge in agency enforcement. The SEC announced that it filed 146 enforcement actions against investment advisers and investment companies during the […]

In an article from InvestmentNews.com, Mark Schoeff Jr., writes that broker-dealers have been engaging in sales practices for structured securities products that hurt retail investors, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) report released in July. The article goes on to say that in an examinations of 11 broker-dealers, the SEC found that the firms […]