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“Protected Certificates: Mandated Gains, Guaranteed” — True Income

“U.S. Gov’t Mandates Texas Media Giant To Pay You 127% Gain By Sep. 15, 2010

“Right now, a little-known Federal Law requires certain U.S. companies pay investors 100% gains or more – WITHOUT touching the stock market.

“Already in 2009, these investments have crushed the S&P 500 by more than 500%, according to The Washington Post.”

That’s how this latest version of the ads for the True Income service from Stansberry begins — the letter is edited by Mike Williams, and I’ve written about similar ads several times … but they’ve invented yet another name for the product they’re obfuscating, and are teasing some more specific picks, so I thought we might just want to take another quick gander at this one.

The core argument of the ad, as it has been for a while now, is that you need to invest in something with a secured return, where you know exactly how much you’ll be paid, and when, and have a guarantee that it will really happen.

Oh, and in addition to the guarantee, you need a massive return — 100% or more in the span of just a year or two, in many cases. If this doesn’t ring a bell you might have missed the teaser ads last year for “Secured Investment Contracts” (that one was almost exactly a year ago) or “Scheduled Distributions“, as they were renamed back in November.

Here’s a bit more of the ad, which explains the current example they’re using (that “Texas Media Giant,” which, as they explain later, is Clear Channel Communications)

“No one knows what will happen to the U.S. stock market over the next 12 months…

“But right now, thanks to a little-known government mandate, you can take almost all the guesswork out of investing.

“In short, a Federal law has required a Texas-based media conglomerate to pay out a secure 127% return…

“Regardless of whether the stock market goes up or down.

“What’s more, if you get in on this deal, the company is required by law to pay you on this exact date:

“September 15, 2010.

“In other words, if you take a $10,000 stake in this company today, you are legally entitled to collect a $20,300 return… precisely 15 months from now.

“And in addition to your $20,300 return, you’re also legally entitled to collect 3 interest payments along the way…

“Bringing your total return to $22,700.”

So of course, Mike Williams is still pitching corporate bonds — he did for a while start to tout convertible bonds, which are more levered to the stock market, but now it looks like he’s back to plain ‘ol corporate debt — you lend a company money, you collect interest payments, and you get your principal back in the end. The real returns come, if you’re buying distressed debt like this on the secondary market, when you get your principal back, because often these bonds trade at a steep discount to the principal … which, though the risk doesn’t get talked about much in the ads, implies that most investors don’t think you’re getting all that principal back.

Yes, the law says that if you borrow money, you have to pay it back — and most corporate bonds do perform, and do repay you your principal at the end. But of course, “most” is not a great solace during times like these, when bankruptcies are up and some creditors are getting squeezed. The biggest example in recent months are the auto companies — GM and Chrysler actually went bankrupt and the bondholders got back far less than the principal of their bonds (and in shares of the new company, not necessarily in cash); and Ford didn’t go bankrupt, but did negotiate with some bondholders to convert their debt to equity, which, again, is not exactly the same as getting all your principal cash back.

Bondholders can get stuck, too, despite the fact that they have more claim to the company’s assets than do stockholders — if a bond is trading for 50 cents on the dollar, it means that a lot of people don’t think the principal will be returned, either because the company goes bankrupt and may not have enough assets to pay back bondholders, or because bondholders will be afraid of losing their full principal and will, en masse, negotiate a deal with the company to dilute their position or reduce the principal due.

But enough of my high horse — we know that when Mike Williams talks “Protected Certificates” he means “corporate bonds.” So what bonds is he looking at now?

Well, we know they gave that Clear Channel example in the start of the ad — that one is indeed a bond that’s due on September 15 of next year, and it’s trading at about $60 per $100 of principal plus pays interest at a rate of 7%+ (off the $100, so more than 10% based on the current principal). With a distressed price like that, you would have to assume that it’s a frightening bond — and indeed, the latest rating issued was from S&P, which put them at CC.

What does CC mean, you ask? Their ratings are explained pretty well here, but it places this bond clearly in “junk” territory, if you couldn’t already guess that by the hugely discounted price (“Junk” is just a term popularized in the 1980s for low-grade, high-interest-rate corporate debt — as distinguished from “Investment grade” debt which is much more reliable and pays lower interest rates). Here’s the quote:

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“Debt rated ‘CCC’ has a currently identifiable vulnerability to default, and is dependent on favorable business, financial, and economic conditions to meet timely payment of interest and repayment of principal. In the event of adverse business, financial, or economic conditions, it is not likely to have the capacity to pay interest and repay principal. The rating ‘CC’ is typically applied to debt subordinated to senior debt which is assigned an actual or implied ‘CCC-‘ rating.

So what are the actual “protected certificates” that Williams is currently hawking?

“I recently identified 3 American companies offering “Protected Certificates” with the biggest and safest gains.

“They include a popular drugstore company… an East Coast supermarket chain… and a semiconductor manufacturer.

“If you’re interested, I’ll send you the CUSIP codes within the next 30 minutes. All you have to do is follow my step-by-step instructions and relay these codes to your broker.

“Your scheduled returns could be 95%, 282%, and 90% within the next few years.

“Not only that, you’ll be set to receive 12 separate interest checks from these companies over the next 3 years, while you wait for your final payout:

“* June 15, 2009
“* August 15, 2009
“* December 15, 2009
“* June 15, 2010
“* August 15, 2010
“* December 15, 2010
“* June 15, 2011
“* August 15, 2011
“* December 15, 2011
“* June 15, 2012
“* August 15, 2012
“* December 15, 2012”

I can’t tell you for sure what these are, but here are my best guesses:

Supermarket chain: Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea (more familiarly known as A&P). Their bond matures on December 15, 2012, implied annual yield of better than 22% because it trades at close to a 40% discount to maturity. CUSIP 390064AK9, details here from FINRA. Rated CCC+ by S&P. By point of comparison, Safeway, a financially stronger firm, has bonds that trade at a premium to principal and yield less than 3.5%.

Semiconductor company: AMD. Their bond matures on August 15, 2012, and it’s trading at a pretty comparable yield to A&P, around 23% (also close to a 40% discount to maturity) — rated only by Fitch, which gives them a “CC”. Details from FINRA here, the CUSIP is 007903AN7.

Drugstore? I didn’t find one that precisely matches those maturities, but I’ll throw out a guess for you that’s along these same lines: Rite Aid, which just goes to show you that “popular” need not mean “profitable.” Rite Aid has about $6 billion in debt and only a $1 billion market cap, and they’re still losing money. The maturities don’t match up to the teaser precisely, so it could be a different troubled drugstore chain, but if you’re curious about Rite Aid you can buy a bond due in less than a year that is supposed to yield over 40%, or one due on 8/15/2013 that is expected to yield about 20% a year. Assuming, of course, that Rite Aid can keep paying its creditors.

Should you be dabbling in these individual bonds? Well, that’s a question only you can answer — it’s tough for small investors, not only because you have to examine the company as carefully as you do before making a stock investment, but because the market is more opaque and harder to trade in, and because the minimum amounts can often be relatively high, which makes it tougher to build a diversified portfolio. There are, of course, plenty of ETFs, mutual funds, and closed-end funds that also buy corporate debt, both junk rated and investment grade (and sometimes both), so there are plenty of options.

And of course, keep in mind that if we enter — as some folks expect — an era of significantly higher inflation, bonds could be a tough investment whether they’re junk or not. If you expect that, it’s definitely wise to keep the maturities short, so you’re not stuck in a bond that gets repaid in five or ten years with inflated dollars. If you like corporate debt but prefer stuff that’s rated a little bit higher, you can also always check out the teaser we examined last week for the Bond Trader (they called bonds “Payment on Demand Certificates” … everyone’s got a thesaurus of fake terms, it appears).

Like any of these bonds? Have a favorite way to buy corporate debt? Or do you think it’s a fool’s errand? Let us know with a comment below.

And if you’re curious about True Income, you can see subscriber reviews here (or add your own, if you’ve ever tried this service).

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Don Believit
Don Believit
June 22, 2009 10:14 am

He recomended RiteAid. He recomended Aleris International. Aleris filed Chapter 11. . .not bankruptsy. That means Aleris is protected from paying bond holders and stock holders what is owed them. It dosen’t matter that the company can be sold and is worth enough to pay the bond holders first all that is owed them, Aleris can “reorganize”, pay stock holders nothing, and maybe pay the bond holders a small % somewhere down the line. Bond holders are not protected. . .they get screwed. I tried True Value and I got screwed. No more interest payments. No $30,000 at maturity. Aleris is doing business as usual but is PROTECTED FROM PAYING ME WHAT IT OWES ME. Now I can wait and see if Freescale semiconductor, or Realogy, or RiteAid will be the next to file Chap. 11 and protect themselves from paying bondholders, etc. If you haven’t fallen for that line of crap, don’t.

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SageNot
Member
SageNot
June 22, 2009 1:19 pm

Don’t know Mike Williams; but to call an investment service “True Income” at a very lofty price & then deliver huge losses instead has to make you wonder, it would make me wonder anyhow.

Stansberry is a multimillionaire, & not many of his associate’s clients are anything close to break even these past two years +, WHAT SAY YOU PORTER?

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Fabian
Fabian
June 22, 2009 1:27 pm

Unless you can afford proper diversification, you have to be crazy to invest in these bonds. If you want the yield get a HI YIELD bond fund. Their positions are rarely above 2.5% of the fund’s value.
The nerve they have to call this kind of investment “protected”.

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Ron
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Ron
June 22, 2009 4:05 pm

I have dabbled in 6 or 8 of these over the years, including GAJ (A&P’s bond which I still hold).

2 of them did indeed go bankrupt. For one (Mirant) I ended up making several hundred % by selling the company stock I received.

The other was GM. I need say nothing more. I still buy them if the return is right, but am always prepared to end up losing it all.

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Joe
Joe
June 23, 2009 5:29 pm

Thanks so much posting this review. You saved me the $1200 that Stansbury wanted as well as any of these junk bonds I might have bought.

This review prompted me to do further web searches on junk corporate bonds and the horrow stories far out weiigh any of the few succeses I found.

My monhtly subscription to Irregulars is worth every dime.

Thank You

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RICHARD CHINJE
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RICHARD CHINJE
October 4, 2009 6:43 pm

Ican’t wt for thisreport

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