Playing The Odds

Article Excerpt

My ideal investment is what you might call a “heads-you-win, tails-you-break-even” situation. These investments can produce healthy profits, but you won’t get hurt too badly when they disappoint you. This contrasts with the traditional sucker bet, where the odds are more like “heads-you-break- even, tails-you-lose”. You may make a profit in a sucker bet. But it’s likely to be a modest profit that falls way short of justifying your risk. “Theme investments” are a hotbed of traditional sucker bets. These include structured products that promoters assemble to trade on a theme or concern that’s in the news. Today’s common themes include water, the environment and global warming. Earlier themes include the Internet, nanotechnology, biotech, leisure and China. Investments are picked to go into these products because they make them easy to sell to investors. The underwriting brokers structure these products to make it easy to extract commissions and themes. With that kind of selection criteria, it’s easy to see why these products generally provide you with…