Here is a company with a unique service, Amerifund Capital Finance, LLC., located in Boca Raton, FL. If you need some immediate capital, they offer low rate loans with a 35 to 80% LTV using your stock holdings as collateral.

“A stock loan is indeed a loan, and not a sale. Share owners concerned about losing equities they’d much rather keep but needing cash now can at last tap their portfolio’s value for up to 80% of the effective market price while still participating in some or all of the stock’s rise in value over the term of the loan — all without selling their shares.” –Amerifund

There is one restriction on the use of the loan proceeds and that it may not be used to purchase marginable securities. Other than that, the proceeds can be used in numerous ways. You can use it as a hedge against the current volatile markets, purchase real estate, buy a business or purchase many other tangible assets.
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“The bold effort the present bank had made to control the Government, the distress it had wantonly produced … arc but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution, or the establishment of another like it.” - Andrew Jackson, referring to the Second Bank of the United States

“Congress Demands Answers from Fed, Bear Stearns” reads one headline on Reuters, while another from the Wall Street Journal online states “SEC Role is Scrutinized In Light of Bear Woes”. It appears that our dutifully elected politicians will hold a hearing next week to examine the details of the J.P. Morgan Chase & Co’s bailout of Bear Stearns and the role that the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department played in helping.

Why would Congress want a hearing for answers they should already know? Are they that ignorant or is it because it is an election year and they want to make it appear that they are working for the public good? Maybe the protestors in Bear Stearns’ lobby demonstrating against government bailouts of big banks while homeowners are abandoned had something to do with it. No, our lawmakers are just ignorant.
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Is it just me or does the name AcmeInvestor.com conjures up thoughts of Wiley Coyote from the kid’s cartoon, “The Road Runner Show”? If I had not known any better, I would have thought that this site might have been the rebirth of the PIPS scam if the names were substituted.

Does the concept sound familiar to you? A private loan program, earning 2% per day for 180 days plus throw in the humanitarian aid objective to the recipe and voila you have an investment that anyone can trust. Wait a minute, it’s not an investment. It is a “private loan”.
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Traditional individual retirement accounts and Roth IRAs are both good ways to save for your retirement while enjoying either a tax deferral or tax free benefits. In a traditional IRA, you invest pre-tax dollars and pay taxes when you withdraw the money. A Roth IRA on the other hand, you pay taxes on what you invest and are tax free when you withdraw.

Both types however lack choices and options in terms of the type of investments that you can participate in. Usually, you are limited to a portfolio of stocks, mutual funds, money market funds and CDs. The majority of the banks, insurance companies and stock brokers that are the custodians and plan administrators of these IRAs do not offer any other investment choices.

If you want more options and better control of your investments in an IRA, you will have to find a plan administrator that specializes in self-directed IRAs. Self-directed IRAs gives you all the tax benefits of the traditional or Roth IRA, but more freedom to invest in different types of assets.
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Are you thinking about paying for a stock advisory service and don’t know which one is worth your time and money? Before spending your hard earned money, you will need to know if they are any good and what their true track record. Not all advisories are as great as their sales pitch. (Makes you wonder if they are great at investing why don’t they just retire from their trades instead of selling advice.)

The truth is that many are not transparent as to their performances and use a hypothetical model or historical back testing with their strategies or “system” which in most case is inaccurate. This can be costly if your trades based on their recommendations turns out to be losers. In addition to your trading losses, the expense of most advisories can be pretty hefty.

Before spending several hundreds or a thousand bucks for an advisory subscription, do a thorough background search. An easy method is asking questions on investment web sites, on blogs or in investing forums for clients that may have used the advisory service and get some feedback.
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If you read our post on High Capital Investments back in October and wondered why the site is currently not accessible; there is a reason for that. Much thanks to one of our readers for providing the information. The reason is not very good news for TC & P Trade dba High Capital Investments.

On February 25th, 2008 the Securities and Exchange Commission of Maryland filed administrative proceedings against TC & P Trade and David Brook. You can read all about it here.

It is a sombering reminder that all investments, on or offline and no matter how good they sound; one must dig as deep as possible with due diligence before investing. Unfortunately, it took government actions before we could find the truth.

If you are cash heavy and sitting on the sidelines because of the current stock market volatility, you might as well put some of that money to work in some safe certificates of deposits. To get yields that are better than the national average, you may want to bid on it through an online auction at zionsdirect.com.

Investors with winning bids for various maturities are getting some yields that are worth mentioning. Some examples are 3.26% for three-month CDs and 3.40% for six-month CDs. There are also one-month and one-year CDs up for bids as well. Currently, there are some one-month CDs priced to yield between 3.1 - 3.60%.

If one-month certificates are offered every month, it does not take a whole lot of math to figure out that if one is successful in winning a bid for them each month, one can make double digit yields over the course of 12 months.
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They are definitely doing something right over at Radiant Capital Advisors with their managed foreign exchange accounts. Out of 8 different leveraged products available, six posted double digit gains and one with a 214.25% total return for the 2007 year. Only one strategy recorded a loss of 6.97% for the year.

Their products are geared more towards the high net-worth individuals. Minimum investments start at $30K for the Alpha X10 and $5M for the EKFX-OP managed account, which incidentally returned the 214.25% in 2007. If 5 million is a bit much for your pocketbook, then 30K might be manageable -Alpha X10 did not do too shabby either with a 90.63% ROI.

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