To protect yourself from fraud, think critically, and verify before you trust.
When it comes to investing your hard-earned money, we propose taking President Reagan’s wisdom one step further. You should verify before you trust. This important step is often overlooked. But it’s critical. Vetting the validity and efficacy of alternative investing programs is your first defense against fraud.
Individual intelligence or success in life does not insulate anyone from investing schemes and scams. Highly educated people have fallen prey to some of the most outrageous cons. The simple fact: investment fraud and scams can be sophisticated and are designed to appeal to our most basic desires as an investor.
Like all healthy humans, you are almost certain to have investing biases that make you vulnerable to fraud. Being aware of these biases can help investors avoid being manipulated. Many dangerous scams often look perfectly legitimate from the outside and balance on the line of never seeming too good to be true.
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The American Dream Experience is a free breakthrough financial training where you can discover how to leverage the fundamental principles of long-term wealth creation and how to tell the difference between Nobel Prize-winning investment strategies such as Efficient Market Hypothesis vs possible gambling, fraudulent or harmful advice.
It is important to know these four pieces of information about any potential investment provider before doing business with them.
An independent third-party custodian can provide an important measure of protection in which your investment manager never handles deposits, or withdrawals directly. This means your money is safeguarded where only you can access it, shielding you against potential mismanagement and fraud.
Audited financial statements can help you verify that a potential investment provider is stable and viable.
Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS®) is the benchmark reporting system in the investing industry. GIPS® verified returns can show you how a potential investment provider has performed historically. But many financial firms are unable or unwilling to provide this information — which may be a significant red flag to an investor.
Before investing your money with an organization, it is important to know if they have been fined or penalized by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Finra or bank regulators for violating laws or regulations put in place to protect investors.
