Preventing Investment Fraud

If you are new to the investing world, there are people out there who will try and scam you. This is true with every aspect of life, and the world of investing is no exception. If there is money to be made or stolen you can rest assure there are crooks out there trying to find a way to steal yours.


There is no safer place than to keep your money in a savings account at the local bank. As long as the bank is FDIC insured your money will be protected by the government. A limit of $250,000 does apply to these types of accounts. So if you have over that amount you should not place all of it in the same account. A savings account is a type of investment because your money is earning interest as it sits there. The bank will use it to make loans and give you a specified percentage rate in return for letting them use it. At the moment rates are not that favorable and many are considering other investment options.


Placing your money with a stock broker is another alternative. There are many online brokers that will allow you to direct your funds into a variety of different asset classes. When looking at a broker make sure that they too offer insurance from SIPC. Brokers who will not insure your accounts can potentially be scams that will take your money and run. Using a broker based in your own country is also advised. If the broker asks for money to be transferred to an overseas account, red flags should go off in your head. There are many reputable brokers here in the U.S. that are available to the retail investor. Going online and researching the various brokers that are available is a good idea. Many will have both full service financial advisors, to help you out, or let you choose the stocks you would like to buy yourself. Your investment experience and knowledge will help you make the decision as to how much help you require form your stock broker.


Like stock brokers, currency brokers will offer you as an investor the opportunity to invest in the currency markets. There are many online foreign currency scams on the internet, mostly revolving around computer programs that will make you money. Please do not trust these money making systems, as they will not make you the money as promised. The same basic principles hold true when trying to find a good currency broker. Do your research online and read the many forex broker reviews that are available. These reviews will help you to see the pros and cons that other investors had with the brokers that are available to the retail investor. Make sure your broker, either stock or currency, has representative available for you to speak with by telephone. Making sure that there office has a building headquarters is one way of making sure that the broker is legitimate. As mentioned before many of the scams revolve around brokers that work from third world countries and offer no brokerage service at all.


Giving your money away to someone who claims to be an investment advisor can also lead you to lose money. Besides the various brokers that are available to the retail investor there are other types of investments, such as hedge funds. Hedge fund can promise to offer greater returns, however they do not always do this in reality. These funds are the riskiest types of investments when it comes to fraud. Make sure you know of other investors who have money with the fund before you invest any of your own. The fund manager can be gone the next day with your cash never to be seen again, it has happened before and will most likely happen again. If you take your time and do the appropriate research there should be no issue on how reputable your local bank, broker or fund manager is. If as an investor you do not feel confident or comfortable giving your money to a particular institution then do not do it. Ask as many questions as you need answered for them to earn your business

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Joel Greenblatt Knows How to Invest In the Future

Joel Greenblatt’s most recent book, “Magic Formula Investing” deals with the basic philosophy of buying stocks from high earning companies cheaply that will then yield high returns on your investment. There exist only one Magic Formula Fund which is reporting recording stocks as of this day .


This idea follows  the launch of his online money management company, Formula Investing, last  October, in which he offers clients “a unique stock screening system, and a disciplined approach to managing portfolios of high value stock” for them. He is also the author of “The Little Book That Beats The Market”, which was on the NY Times bestseller list, as well as “You Can Be a Stock Market Genius: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits”, published back in 1997.


Born in Great Neck on the north shore of Long Island on December 13, 1957, Greenblatt, served as the former chairman of Alliant Techsystems, and is the founder of  the New York Securities Auction Corp. He also began Gotham Captial, a hedge fund backed by Michael Milken (the infamous “junk bond king”) in 1985.
In addition to his devotion to investing on Wall Street, Joel Greenblatt firmly believes in investing his own money in New York City’s educational system, particularly those schools catering to minority students.


Not only did he gift $2.5 million to the Ozone Park, NY elementary school PS 65Q, whose student body is primarily made up of kids from South Asian and South American immigrant families, but he also held found a charter school in Manhattan known as the “Harlem Success Academy” in 2006. Both schools continue to receive his support and have merited high marks for their growing academic achievements. In addition, Greenblatt serves on the board for the Institute for Student Achievement, which works to develop small senior high schools out of  larger ones in order to raise the standard of education in communities across the country.

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All About Global Macro Trading

The global macro trading system can work effectively for every trader. If you have an already established system that works for you, why not expand it to participate in global macro trading?


If you have already been an established day trader, have you considered gravitating into a market that has more options such as the entire planet? Similar to a doctor attempting to diagnose an ailment, you have to search and then search once again to reach the end result. At times, the doctor will prescribe medications that just don’t seem to work, and you go back to the doctor to try something different. Well, it is no different in the stock market. You may think you are on track and it fails, so you attempt something different up until you find something that works.

If you are a stock trader, you understand this methodology. You have your system tweaked to the point where you know how to check your price to earnings and then price to book. You also look at the return you will receive on your equity, right? The better the system you have built, the better protection you have in the market thus improving your risk to rewards. The stock market is not an easy business. Sometimes it becomes a matter of trial and error. Eventually, we are fortunate and then other times, we tend to lose. The more educated you are the better a risk to reward you will have.


The global macro trading market provides an edge as it is worldwide, which means you can trade any instrument using the strategy you have developed globally. That means your chances of locating the best investment are greater. This market has really made a tremendous comeback compared to the last couple of years of trading. This is because a lot of people were trading long and leveraged. The macro traders however were shorting housing and financials then going long and doing some real interesting trading in short treasuries and dabbling in the commodities market.


What this really means is the global macro trading market provides a lot of options to test a variety of strategies. So if you set up your strategies to build on a model that you wish to invest, in you could be a real winner. This is a specialized market and the person who is new to stock trading might want to educate themselves before becoming active. If you are an active day trader that utilizes the same stocks day in and day out, you might not have an interest in global macro trading. However, anyone else that wants a variety and has a need to venture into a new market with a high variety, then global macro trading might be for you.

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