ARS victim

Retail Investors Stuck Holding Auction Rate Securities

A prospectus is only required for the initial public offering. As of the very next auction, the new buyer of the security does not get a prospectus. Part of the problem is that investment houses were allowed to work behind this cloak of secrecy. The financial analyst were given "buy" recommendations by there research department and it was passed on to the customer. Shades of Henry Blodget and the internet boom. I get a prospectus every time I parked cash in ANY MM account, not so with ARS.
I thought my broker, ML, was there to protect me not to con me into buying something they could no longer sell. I was busy following stock picks. I never expected to be blind sided by the fixed income side of my portfolio.

Retail Investors Stuck Holding Auction Rate Securities

Blackrock is one of my ARS holdings. They're not working very hard to refinance but they've just raised 10.9 billion to go into a vulture venture in real estate. That money should have been allocated to deleveraging and getting money back to ARS victims/ Here's the article

www.nytimes.com/2008/0...

Retail Investors Stuck Holding Auction Rate Securities

Nice article. When is someone going to connect the dots and call it what it is "The fraud of the century." We got sucked into ARS as of 10/07, just as ML realized it was short on cash. Not sending any prospectus was a plus. When I finally received one after the auctions were closed I did some research. Everyone of the securities I own is underwritten by ML PLUS each company is really a hedge fund in disguise. They simply dumped their inventory in my account. For my IRA I wanted MM liquidity while I was trading stocks and now I'm a stockholder in hedge funds? I wouldn't touch any brokerage stock for a long time nor will I ever use a financial advisor again. ML has too many conflicts of interest and can not be trusted to protect me. They stupidly screwed their best customers. I don't see them wanting this to go to a class action suit with a jury trial.