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How to spot investment coaching scams
March 17, 2021 / Ray Wills
“My program is going to make you a lot of money. I’ll show you how to do everything you need to do to be successful.” Ads like this are usually a scam. The Federal Trade Commission recently announced Operation Income Illusion, a nationwide effort to prevent income scams that promise to make people a lot of money by participating in a special program.…
Individual investor muscle
March 08, 2021 / The Merrill Anderson Company
As January closed there was some very unusual excitement in the stock markets. The price of shares of videogame reseller GameStop, which had languished for years near $5, suddenly began to rocket skyward, to $40, then $60, then $120, eventually cresting at well over $400 per share before coming back down to earth. This despite an absence of profitability.…
Investor alert: Robinhood app hit with hefty fine from federal regulators
February 23, 2021 / Shelby White
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently charged Robinhood Financial LLC for failure to fully disclose the firm’s receipt of payments from trading firms for routing customer orders to them.…
Gift values during a pandemic
February 16, 2021 / The Merrill Anderson Company
The value for federal gift tax purposes of a gift of $100,000 in cash is $100,000, and the same is true for the value of $100,000 worth of publicly traded stock. Those are the easy cases. The hard cases concern assets that are harder to value, such as real estate or interests in a closely held business.…
How to avoid the car wrap scam
February 10, 2021 / Ray Wills
With many people facing financial hardships during the coronavirus crisis, receiving a package in the mail with a check would probably make most folks happier than a kid at Disney World. Seemingly, all you have to do is put a decal on your car and that money is yours. Well, we hate to break it to you, but no, you’re not actually getting paid to put decals on your vehicle. Yep, it’s a scam.…
