Investor Alerts

Don't have the cash for the down payment on your dream house? At some brokerage firms that offer up to 100% loan-to-value ratio mortgages or pledged-asset mortgages, that's not a problem.

With a rising stock market, record low interest rates, and large gains in home value, some investors have taken out new mortgages, refinanced, or obtained line-of-credits secured by their homes for the specific purpose of investing in securities. The hope is that the investment will not only pay the mortgage, but also generate additional income. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out that way.

Certain load mutual funds allow you to buy Class A shares without paying the front-end sales load if you buy that fund using proceeds from the sale of shares in a different mutual fund family for which you paid a front-end or back-end sales charge.

You may be eligible for a refund of a portion of the front-end sales charge that you paid when you purchased Class A shares of a mutual fund from your securities firm. An industry-wide survey indicated that investors did not receive discounts in approximately one out of every five transactions that were eligible for discounts.

Before you invest in a principal-protected fund, it is important to understand how "principal protected" funds (or, alternatively, "principal protection," "capital preservation," or "guaranteed" funds) work and what they cost.

Mutual funds often offer discounts on front-end sales charges or loads for larger investments. The investment levels at which the discounts become available are called "breakpoints."

If you own a life insurance policy, you may have been approached to exchange it for another new policy. You need to know that even though the tax laws make the exchange income tax free and the new policy may appear better to you, you may be losing - not gaining - if you make the exchange.

Have you received faxes, spam, or junk email urgently recommending that you invest in stocks of companies that make defense, anti-terrorism, or biological detection products? If you have, you may be the target of an investment scam.

FINRA is issuing this alert to provide basic information about RMDs, and to provide answers to a number of common RMD questions. We focus on RMDs from traditional IRAs because these are the type of retirement accounts where individuals are directly responsible for computing required minimum distributions.