In a speech given at the SIFMA Complex Products Forum in New York City on October 29, 2014, Susan F. Axelrod, Executive Vice President of FINRA’s Regulatory Operations, once again emphasized the regulatory concerns over the influx of money into riskier products as investors continued to search for income on their assets, assets that were becoming more complex and moving further out on the risk curve in the quest for yield.

With current yields on money market funds remaining near zero, Ms. Axelrod noted that FINRA continues to see assets moving into complex financial products and longer-duration or high-yield bond products as the average daily trades in investment-grade corporate bonds by retail investors have declined each year, while average daily trades in junk bonds continue to increase.

Among the issues that are at the forefront of regulatory concerns are whether investors are sufficiently prepared for rising interest rates and whether they fully understand how the value of their investments may change when the Federal Reserve Bank begins to raise interest rates as well as whether market professionals and their systems are prepared to maintain orderly trade amid a possible increase – potentially significant increase – in trading-environment volatility?

FINRA and other regulators remain especially concerned that investors are taking on risks that they either don’t understand or cannot afford – especially with respect to interest rate-sensitive products, as well as structured products that embed fixed income securities or fixed income features.

One of the structured retail products of particular concern is “steepeners” which are principal-protected, longer-term notes that generally have fixed-to-floating coupons, with an initial, attractive rate followed by floating rates based on the spread between long- and short-term interest rates. The higher the spread, the steeper the yield curve. Issuers are adding a “trigger” linked to an equity index. The trigger serves as a downside buffer but once the buffer is breached, the investor could potentially lose principal.

”Range accrual notes” are another popular structured retail product which offer potentially attractive yields that are linked to the performance of one or more market reference points, such as the S&P 500 Index or three-month LIBOR. The coupon on the range accrual is determined by the extent to which the reference point value stays in a fixed range during a given period. The greater the percentage of time it meets the criterion, the higher the coupon payment to the investor. Historically, these products offered full principal protection, but as with “steepeners,” FINRA is seeing increased issuance of range accrual notes with principal at risk.

A third product that continues to cause regulatory concern is alternative mutual funds, or Alt Funds, which are marketed to investors as a way to invest in complex, actively managed strategies that will perform in any number of market environments, but may be sold by financial advisors who do not understand the underlying strategies or holdings.

The fourth product highlighted by Ms. Axelrod in her comments was unconstrained bond funds which, given the the complexity of the funds’ strategies, may make it difficult for investors and registered representatives to understand how the funds may perform in various market conditions and may complicate representatives’ suitability determinations.

Finally, FINRA remains concerned about the products that primarily invest in floating-rate bank loans which, due to their high yields and the floating rate, are products that invest in leveraged loans that may be attractive to investors chasing yield and looking to protect their portfolios from rising interest rates. Despite the lower interest-rate risk, these loans carry significant credit and call risk. These loans are also relatively illiquid, trade over the counter and can be difficult to value.

As noted by Ms. Axelrod, complex products continue to present a number of challenges to firms, brokers and clients. In this environment, firms that are going to make complex products available to customers have a duty to make sure investors fully understand how the products operate and the risks of each product which begins with brokers having a full understanding of the products they sell and receiving training on the features of the product as well as their firm’s own suitability guidelines for the products.

Berry will be starting his new position as Executive Vice President and Director of Dispute Resolution starting December 1st. Replacing Linda Fienberg who is set to retire November 30th.  He reports directly to FINRA’s Chairman and CEO, Richard Ketchum.

Ketchum said, “Rick is an effective and thoughtful leader who brings a fresh perspective at a crucial time as we build the future of the forum. We are fortunate to have someone who throughout his career with FINRA has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to ensuring that our forum provides the highest level of service to the investors and other parties who use it. I would also like to thank Linda for the exceptional contributions she has made to FINRA’s Dispute Resolution Forum over the past 18 years.”

Berry graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara and Hastings College of Law. Beginning his career as a member of the California Bar and practicing in San Francisco. He joined NASD in 1995 as the head of Dispute Resolution’s Los Angeles satellite office, later being promoted to Director of Case Administration in NASD’s New York office in 2001. Berry currently serves as Senior Vice President and oversees FINRA Dispute Resolutions, four regional offices.

For the original press release: http://www.finra.org/Newsroom/NewsReleases/2014/P601468

A recent New York Times article (“Behind Private Equity’s Curtain,” October 18, 2014), has exposed the all too often insidious relationship between public pension funds and the private equity firms that are entrusted with the financial retirement security of hundreds of thousands of teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees.

Unfortunately, private equity firms, which are currently estimated to manage $3.5 trillion of assets, have recently underperformed the broad stock market indices and, according to the New York Times article, have intentionally concealed from the public many of the terms and fees that are associated with the investment of their retirement assets as well as the fact that private equity investments are “the highest-risk, highest-fee products ever devised by Wall Street.”

If you are an institutional or public employee pension fund employee who has any concerns about your retirement or non-retirement accounts, please contact us for a no-cost and no-obligation evaluation of your specific facts and circumstances. You may have a viable claim for recovery of your investment losses by filing an individual securities arbitration claim with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

Pacific Investment Management Company is under SEC investigation for possibly artificially boosting the returns of a popular fund aimed at small investors. The heady performance of the ETF raised questions among some of Pimco’s clients about the discrepancy in results between the ETF and the Total Return fund.

The SEC is looking into a maneuver that could make it seem as though the ETF had scored quick gains when it was in fact taking advantage of variations in the way some investments are valued in the bond market. The firm’s flagship exchange-traded fund, managed by Bill Gross, purchased and valued certain bonds, Your Value Your Change Short position bought investments at discounted prices and relied on higher valuations for the investments when the fund calculated the value of its holdings shortly thereafter.

Pimco’s alleged maneuver means investors were given inaccurate information about the fund’s performance. It is a break of securities law to provide investors with misleading information about values or performance, even if the wrong information was supplied unintentionally.

Pimco “has been cooperating with the SEC in this nonpublic matter, and we take our regulatory obligations and responsibilities to our clients very seriously. We believe our pricing procedures are entirely appropriate and in keeping with industry best practices,” said a spokesman for the firm.

Gross, PIMCO manager, is one of the most successful bond investors ever. He is considered the driving force behind the firm’s growth into a blue-chip money manager, with almost $2 trillion in assets under management as of June 30.

Concerns that investments are too complicated and expensive, the nation’s largest pension fund, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, will eliminate all of its hedge fund investments over the next year.

Overseeing $300 billion, the pension fund, says they will be liquidating its positions in 24 hedge funds and six hedge fund-of-funds — investments that total $4 billion and more than 1 percent of its total investments under management.

It is likely to resonate across the investment community in the United States, where large investment funds look to CALPERS as a leader because of its size and the superiority of its investments.

Citigroup Global Markets Inc. is being fined $1.85 million for best execution and supervisory violations in non-convertible preferred securities transactions. They also ordered Citigroup to pay more than $638,000 in compensation, plus interest, to affected clients.

It was found that one of Citigroup’s trading desks employed a manual pricing methodology for non-convertible preferred securities that did not appropriately incorporate the National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO) for those securities. As securities trade on multiple exchanges, Citigroup missed the prospect of a better price for that security on an exchange other than its primary listing exchange. FINRA also found that Citigroup’s supervisory system and written supervisory dealings for best execution in non-convertible preferred securities were lacking. Finally, the firm failed to conduct supervisory reviews even though it had received several inquiry letters from FINRA staff.

“FINRA will continue to pursue firms that neglect their duty of best execution. Citigroup lacked the necessary systems and supervision to ensure that it provided customers with the executions they deserved and, as a result, customers were receiving inferior prices for more than three years,” says FINRA Executive Thomas Gira.

 

Investors’ fears of rising interest rates of traditional bonds, have shown an influx in these “go anywhere” funds. With a focus on returns, many investors don’t understand the risk. In the category of a nontraditional bond fund, they hold a large percentage of the portfolios in high-yield bonds, which have huge potential for default. Some of the funds are full of derivatives, along with emerging-markets bonds and illiquid bank loans. Popular unconstrained bond funds suffered declines of 25% during the 2008 financial crisis.

A complicated investment to begin with, structured notes have grown more complex the last few years and are best to be avoided. They commonly claim to limit instability in a down market. A debt instrument whose return hinges on the price movements of other assets, such as, commodities and stocks. These notes aren’t backed by any collateral and often come with substantial fees. They are purchased through a bank or third party. A knowledgeable financial adviser doesn’t offer structured notes to their clients, because of their complexity and liquidity issues.

Leveraged ETFs are designed to provide investors with a certain percentage return over the movement of a market over the span of a day. Inverse funds are supposed to move in the opposite direction of a specific index, to provide protection against declines.

The problem with these types of funds, is their use of borrowed money to magnify their bets also magnifies risk. The category has seen $2.8 billion in net inflows so far this year through mid-June, according to ETF.com, a research firm.

David Nadig, director of research at ETF.com says, “Many of these ETFs use “total return swaps”, a complicated financial agreement that allows a fund to take on leverage to boost returns. That adds a “counterparty” risk if the investment bank issuing the swap goes bust”.

Mr. Lee, Morningstar’s ETF analyst, says leveraged ETFs are aimed at day traders, who are constantly changing their portfolios and can take on more risk. “It’s not something you can buy and just forget about,” Mr. Lee says.

“If you want to make a strong bet on stocks, for example, you can invest in small stocks with a greater potential upside,” Mr. Lee says.

Nontraded REITs have been growing in popularity lately. Through June of this year, nontraded REITs have raised $8.8 billion. These real-estate investment trusts are similar to their public counterparts, which trade like stocks and allow investors to invest in an array of commercial properties.

The downside for investors is that they are hard to unload during a real-estate downturn. Fees are higher, as much as 11% in initial sales charges to pay the retail broker, the dealer and the back-end costs of putting the REIT together. Also, these investments have become a concern of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The agency is warning that they are generally illiquid, their performance and value are difficult to understand, and their cost is too high. Disclosure is murkier than with publicly traded REITs as well.