by Investopedia Staff, (Investopedia.com)
It is unfortunate, but words often associated with money and fortune are "cheat," "steal," and "lie." Who among us hasn't "accidentally" taken two $500 bills from the Monopoly bank, or forgotten at least once to pay $5 back to a friend? Chances are you were never called on it because your friends trusted you. Just as we trust our friends, we put faith in the investing world. Investing in a stock takes a lot of research, but it also requires us to make a lot of assumptions. For example, we assume reported earnings and revenue figures are correct, and that management is competent and honest. But these assumptions can be disastrous.
IN PICTURES: Stock Scams Slideshow
Understanding how disasters happened in the past can help investors avoid them in the future. With that in mind, we'll look at some of the all-time greatest cases of companies betraying their investors. Some of these cases are truly amazing; try to look at them from a shareholder's standpoint. Unfortunately, these shareholders had no way of knowing what was really happening as they were being tricked into investing.
ZZZZ Best Inc., 1986 - Barry Minkow, the owner of this business, posited that this carpet cleaning company of the 1980s would become the "General Motors of carpet cleaning". Minkow appeared to be building a multi-million dollar corporation, but he did so through forgery and theft. He created more than 10,000 phony documents and sales receipts without anybody suspecting anything. Although his business was a complete fraud designed to deceive auditors and investors, Minkow shelled out more than $4 million to lease and renovate an office building in San Diego. ZZZZ Best went public in December of 1986, eventually reaching a market capitalization of more than $200 million. Amazingly, Barry Minkow was only a teenager at the time! He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Centennial Technologies Inc., 1996 - In December 1996, Emanuel Pinez, the CEO of Centennial Technologies, and his management recorded that the company made $2 million in revenue from PC memory cards - the company was really shipping fruit baskets to customers. But the employees then created fake documents to appear as though they were recording sales. Centennial's stock rose 451% to $55.50 per share on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), between April 1994 and December 1996, Centennial overstated its earnings by about $40 million. Amazingly, the company reported profits of $12 million when it really lost about $28 million! The stock plunged to less than $3. Over 20,000 investors lost almost all of their investment in a company that was once considered a Wall Street darling.
Bre-X Minerals, 1997 - This Canadian company was involved in one of the largest stock swindles in history. Its Indonesian gold property, which was reported to contain more than 200 million ounces, was said to be the richest gold mine ever. The stock price for Bre-X skyrocketed to a high of $280 (split adjusted), making millionaires out of ordinary people overnight. At its peak, Bre-X had a market capitalization of US$4.4 billion. But the party ended on March 19, 1997, when the gold mine proved to be fraudulent, and the stock tumbled to pennies shortly after. The major losers were the Quebec public sector pension fund, which lost $70 million; the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, which lost $100 million and the Ontario Municipal Employees' Retirement Board, which lost $45 million.
Enron, 2001 – Prior to this debacle, Enron, a Houston-based energy trading company was, based on revenue, the seventh largest company in the U.S. Through some fairly complicated accounting practices that involved the use of shell companies, Enron was able to keep hundreds of millions worth of debt off its books. Doing so fooled investors and analysts into thinking this company was more fundamentally stable than it actually was. Additionally, the shell companies, run by Enron executives, recorded fictitious revenues, essentially recording one dollar of revenue multiple times, thus creating the appearance of incredible earnings figures. Eventually, the complex web of deceit unraveled, and the share price dove from over $90 to less than $0.70. As Enron fell, it took down with it Arthur Andersen, the fifth leading accounting firm in the world at the time. Andersen, Enron's auditor, basically imploded after David Duncan, Enron's chief auditor, ordered the shredding of thousands of documents. The fiasco at Enron made the phrase "cook the books" a household term once again.
WorldCom, 2002 - Not long after the collapse of Enron, the equities market was rocked by another billion-dollar accounting scandal. Telecommunications giant WorldCom came under intense scrutiny after yet another instance of some serious "book cooking". WorldCom recorded operating expenses as investments. Apparently, the company felt that office pens, pencils and paper were an investment in the future of the company and therefore expensed (or capitalized) the cost of these items over a number of years. In total $3.8 billion (yes, with a 'b') worth of normal operating expenses - which should all be recorded as expenses for the fiscal year in which they were incurred - were treated as investments and were recorded over a number of years. This little accounting trick grossly exaggerated profits for the year the expenses were incurred; in 2001, WorldCom reported profits of around $1.3 billion. In fact, its business was becoming increasingly unprofitable. Who suffered the most in this deal? The employees - tens of thousands of them lost their jobs. The next ones to feel the betrayal were the investors who had to watch the gut-wrenching downfall of WorldCom's stock price, as it plummeted from more than $60 to less than $0.20.
Tyco International (NYSE: TYC), 2002 - With WorldCom having already shaken investor confidence, the executives at Tyco ensured that 2002 would be an unforgettable year for stocks. Before the scandal, Tyco was considered a safe blue chip investment, manufacturing electronic components, healthcare and safety equipment. During his reign as CEO, Dennis Kozlowski, who was reported as one of the top 25 corporate managers by BusinessWeek, siphoned hordes of money from Tyco in the form of unapproved loans and fraudulent stock sales. Along with CFO Mark Swartz and CLO Mark Belnick, Kozlowski received $170 million in low-to-no interest loans, without shareholder approval. Kozlowski and Belnick arranged to sell 7.5 million shares of unauthorized Tyco stock for a reported $450 million. These funds were smuggled out of the company, usually disguised as executive bonuses or benefits. Kozlowski used the funds to further his lavish lifestyle, which included handfuls of houses, an infamous $6,000 shower curtain and a $2 million birthday party for his wife. In early 2002, the scandal slowly began to unravel and Tyco's share price plummeted nearly 80% in a six-week period. The executives escaped their first hearing due to a mistrial, but were eventually convicted and sentenced to 25 years in jail.
HealthSouth (NYSE: HLS), 2003 - Accounting for large corporations can be a difficult task especially when your boss instructs you to falsify earnings reports. In the late 1990s, CEO and founder Richard Scrushy began instructing employees to inflate revenues and overstate HealthSouth's net income. At the time, the company was one of America's largest healthcare service providers, experiencing rapid growth and acquiring a number of other healthcare related firms. The first sign of trouble surfaced in late 2002, when Scrushy reportedly sold HealthSouth shares worth $75 million, prior to releasing an earnings loss. An independent law firm concluded the sale was not directly related to the loss, but investors should have taken the warning. The scandal unfolded in March, 2003, when the SEC announced that HealthSouth exaggerated revenues by $1.4 billion. The information came to light when CFO William Owens, working with the FBI, taped caught Scrushy talking about the fraud. The repercussions were swift, as the stock fell from a high of $20 to a close of $0.45 in a single day. Amazingly, the CEO was acquitted of 36 counts of fraud, but was later convicted on charges of bribery. Apparently, Scrushy arranged political contributions of $500,000, allowing him to ensure a seat on the hospital regulatory board.
Conclusion
The worst thing about these scams is that you never know until it's too late. Those convicted of fraud might serve several years in prison, which in turn costs investors/taxpayers even more money. These scammers can pick a lifetime's worth of garbage and not even come close to repaying those who lost their fortunes. The SEC works hard to prevent such scams from happening, but with thousands of public companies in North America, it is nearly impossible to ensure that disaster never strikes again.
Is there a moral to this story? Sure. Always invest with care and diversify, diversify, diversify. Maintaining a well-diversified portfolio will ensure that occurrences like these don't run you off the road, but instead remain mere speed bumps on your path to financial independence.
马 到 功 成. Success is when the horses come. Success goes only to those who dare and act, it seldom goes to the timid. The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Friday, September 04, 2009
5 Lessons From The Recession
Lisa Smith
On Wednesday September 2, 2009, 6:56 pm EDT
The bear market of 2008 was a game-changer for many investors. Prior to 2008, a market decline of staggering proportions was a philosophical idea. The Great Depression was a distant event that few people alive today were even around to experience it - and most them were so young when it occurred that it had little or no impact on their personal investment portfolios. (Remember, the 401(k) wasn’t even introduced until 1978, so even the Great Depression did little to derail the retirement dreams of the average investor.) Now that we've lived through a stock market decline in 2008-2009 that not only wiped out a decade's worth of growth but also changed the face of Wall Street forever, what have we learned? Here we look at the top lessons.
1. Risk Matters
Clearly, the amount of risk taken in one's investment portfolio will capture a significantly greater degree of attention in the years ahead. The decline of 2008 taught us that once-in-a-lifetime events can occur. We've also learned that diversification means more than just stocks and bonds. The simultaneous decline of stocks, bonds, housing and commodities is a stark reminder that there are no "sure bets," and that a cash cushion could save the day when times get tough. The blind pursuit of profit with no thought to the downside is a strategy that failed spectacularly.
Moving forward, investors should learn to be leery. Protecting what you've got is just as important as trying to get more. Keeping one eye on risk and the other on growth is a lesson worth remembering.
2. Experts Don't Know Everything
We put a lot of trust in experts, including stock analysts, economists, fund managers, CEOs, accounting firms, industry regulators, government and a host of other smart people. They all let us down. A great many of them lied to us, intentionally misleading us in the name of greed and personal profit. Even index fund providers let us down, charging us a fee for the "privilege" of losing 38% of our money.
While the collapse of long-term capital management in the late 1990s demonstrated that genius does fail, the lesson was seen by all but felt by few. The crash of 2008 was the complete reverse. Few saw it coming, but most felt it arrive. If we've learned anything from the experience, it should be that blind trust is a bad idea and that even experts can't predict the market.
3. You Can't Live on Averages
Market projections, such as those seen in the hypothetical examples included in many 401(k) enrollment kits, always seem to show an 8% return per year, on average doubling your money every eight years. Those pretty pictures make it easy to forget that markets don't usually move in a straight line. All of those projections are based on the idea that investors should buy and hold, but 2008 showed that that strategy doesn't always work, particularly for investors who are approaching retirement.
Next time the markets start to take a dive, people on the cusp of retirement should pay more attention to the possibility of severe declines damaging their odds of leaving the work force any time soon.
What to do? If you see the train coming, get off of the tracks.
4. You Shouldn't Buy What You Don't Understand
The marketplace if filled with complex and exotic offerings that promise the world to investors. Derivatives, special investment vehicles, adjustable-rate mortgages and other new-fangled investments that may be too complex for the average investor racked up huge fees for financial services firms and huge losses for investors. Don't buy what you don't understand is a trite but true sentiment that may be the biggest lesson from the recession.
5. You Can't Delegate Your Future
Far too many investors operate on the "set it and forget it" plan. They dutifully make their biweekly contributions to their 401(k) plans and let the years pass, hoping for magic by the time they retire. Anyone on that plan who expected to retire anytime between 2008 and 2018 or so is likely in for a rude awakening. Set it and forget it failed. Even target-date-funds, which are supposed to automatically move assets to a more conservative stance as retirement approaches, didn't all do the job investors expected them to do. Moving, forward, "pay attention" may be a better mantra than set it and forget it.
The Bottom Line
If your investments are doing well and you get a good run, rebalance to remove risk. If the markets have fallen as far as you can stand, take what you have left and get out. You should know your risk tolerance and know how much damage you have the stomach to take. When you hit your limit, there's no shame in crying "uncle." It's your money, so manage it. Even if you delegate the investment management to experts, educate yourself so that you understand what your money is buying, what your hired experts are doing and what course of action you will take if things don't go your way.
On Wednesday September 2, 2009, 6:56 pm EDT
The bear market of 2008 was a game-changer for many investors. Prior to 2008, a market decline of staggering proportions was a philosophical idea. The Great Depression was a distant event that few people alive today were even around to experience it - and most them were so young when it occurred that it had little or no impact on their personal investment portfolios. (Remember, the 401(k) wasn’t even introduced until 1978, so even the Great Depression did little to derail the retirement dreams of the average investor.) Now that we've lived through a stock market decline in 2008-2009 that not only wiped out a decade's worth of growth but also changed the face of Wall Street forever, what have we learned? Here we look at the top lessons.
1. Risk Matters
Clearly, the amount of risk taken in one's investment portfolio will capture a significantly greater degree of attention in the years ahead. The decline of 2008 taught us that once-in-a-lifetime events can occur. We've also learned that diversification means more than just stocks and bonds. The simultaneous decline of stocks, bonds, housing and commodities is a stark reminder that there are no "sure bets," and that a cash cushion could save the day when times get tough. The blind pursuit of profit with no thought to the downside is a strategy that failed spectacularly.
Moving forward, investors should learn to be leery. Protecting what you've got is just as important as trying to get more. Keeping one eye on risk and the other on growth is a lesson worth remembering.
2. Experts Don't Know Everything
We put a lot of trust in experts, including stock analysts, economists, fund managers, CEOs, accounting firms, industry regulators, government and a host of other smart people. They all let us down. A great many of them lied to us, intentionally misleading us in the name of greed and personal profit. Even index fund providers let us down, charging us a fee for the "privilege" of losing 38% of our money.
While the collapse of long-term capital management in the late 1990s demonstrated that genius does fail, the lesson was seen by all but felt by few. The crash of 2008 was the complete reverse. Few saw it coming, but most felt it arrive. If we've learned anything from the experience, it should be that blind trust is a bad idea and that even experts can't predict the market.
3. You Can't Live on Averages
Market projections, such as those seen in the hypothetical examples included in many 401(k) enrollment kits, always seem to show an 8% return per year, on average doubling your money every eight years. Those pretty pictures make it easy to forget that markets don't usually move in a straight line. All of those projections are based on the idea that investors should buy and hold, but 2008 showed that that strategy doesn't always work, particularly for investors who are approaching retirement.
Next time the markets start to take a dive, people on the cusp of retirement should pay more attention to the possibility of severe declines damaging their odds of leaving the work force any time soon.
What to do? If you see the train coming, get off of the tracks.
4. You Shouldn't Buy What You Don't Understand
The marketplace if filled with complex and exotic offerings that promise the world to investors. Derivatives, special investment vehicles, adjustable-rate mortgages and other new-fangled investments that may be too complex for the average investor racked up huge fees for financial services firms and huge losses for investors. Don't buy what you don't understand is a trite but true sentiment that may be the biggest lesson from the recession.
5. You Can't Delegate Your Future
Far too many investors operate on the "set it and forget it" plan. They dutifully make their biweekly contributions to their 401(k) plans and let the years pass, hoping for magic by the time they retire. Anyone on that plan who expected to retire anytime between 2008 and 2018 or so is likely in for a rude awakening. Set it and forget it failed. Even target-date-funds, which are supposed to automatically move assets to a more conservative stance as retirement approaches, didn't all do the job investors expected them to do. Moving, forward, "pay attention" may be a better mantra than set it and forget it.
The Bottom Line
If your investments are doing well and you get a good run, rebalance to remove risk. If the markets have fallen as far as you can stand, take what you have left and get out. You should know your risk tolerance and know how much damage you have the stomach to take. When you hit your limit, there's no shame in crying "uncle." It's your money, so manage it. Even if you delegate the investment management to experts, educate yourself so that you understand what your money is buying, what your hired experts are doing and what course of action you will take if things don't go your way.
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