3 Simple Steps to Protect Yourself from Investment Fraud

The 3-steps for self-protection against investment fraud are simple.

Step #1 Know who is in control of your money.

You might be surprised, but it is not your advisor or you if you are sending your investment money to a mutual fund or private manager. The actual individual who is making the buy and sell decisions is someone who you or your advisor has probably never met, never talked with and has no knowledge of your existence.

Step #2 Know your investment results.

Don’t fall for someone promoting a return that seems too good to be true, chances are it is. If all you receive is a monthly statement or an annual report from your mutual fund showing you simply a dollar amount you will not have the information you need to protect yourself. You need to know a rate of return in order to compare easily to alternatives. If the returns seem funny, either too high or low, then your guard should be up.

Step #3 Know how much and who you are paying for your investments.

In the thirty years we have been in business this is the one question that no one seems to know the answer to. With money paid to your advisor, your advisor’s firm, your mutual fund marketing company, your mutual fund management company, the traders on Wall Street and possibly others it can be almost impossible to calculate but has to be done by every investor. Why? – Well read on….

“Whether you know it or not. Wall Street wants to steal your future.” – William Bernstein, investment advisor and author “The Four Pillars of Investing.

“The Mutual fund business is “a license to steal”. Martin J. Whitman, Third Avenue Funds

“If investors could rely on only a single factor to select future superior performers and to avoid future inferior performers, it would be fund costs. The record could hardly be clearer: the more the managers and brokers take, the less the investors make” John C. Bogle “The little book of commons sense investing”

We will compute an estimate of your current investment cost free to you. This is not easy and quite difficult and time consuming for us to complete with some accuracy. Because of this we can only offer this to qualified investors. Our minimum new client account value is $100,000. In that we are not a non-profit public service company and we have no intention of going broke, we will do this for individuals who have the minimum account value that could become our client. We also want to expand our business with our neighbors. The resident requirement is needed so that we can actually meet face to face in our office. We promise not to give you a sales pitch unless you ask for it. We will promise to let you know how much it would cost you to hire our firm to manage your investment account and answer any questions we can that you have concerning your investments. The next step is pretty simple – Fill out the form and we will call you and provide all the details to prepare your free cost report.