Stick with ‘plain vanilla’

Article Excerpt

It pays to stay out of new stock issues. Most come to market when it’s a good time for the company and its insiders to sell. This may not be, and often isn’t, a good time for you to buy. New stock issues start out with a big marketing push by the firm that sponsors them. When the initial hoopla ends, hidden risks can emerge. This can spur deep price declines in the new issue that go on for years. Our rule is to stay out of new issues until they’ve survived at least one recession. By then, hidden risk is easier to spot. From bad to worse We are even more inclined to stay out of new issues of structured investments. Financial institutions create these often-complicated investments because they think they’ll be easy to sell to investors. Structured investments often focus on reducing risk. That’s a huge selling point in light of the losses many investors have recently experienced. But it costs money, which…