When investors want something, Wall Street never hesitates to give it to them. But the products Wall Street comes up with are often hard to understand and can end up burning you if you're not extremely careful.
Right now, millions of investors are doing everything they can to boost their income. With so many traditional income-producing investments having seen their payouts slow to a trickle, those investors have had to look well beyond their comfort zone to find ways to make up the difference in their personal budgets. Although regular-dividend-paying stocks have soared in popularity, Wall Street innovation has once again reared its head and come up with a way to squeeze even more income from certain stocks. But before you buy, you'd better understand the catch.
Dividends from Facebook?
As arguably the worst IPO in history, Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) shares don't have many fans right now. But As The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend, Citigroup (NYSE: C) has managed to do what the fledgling social-media giant thus far hasn't: turn the company into a double-digit-percentage income-producing machine.
The secret is what's known in the industry as a structured note. For every $1,000 invested, Citigroup will pay the investor $42.50 per quarter in four equal payments. That comes out to a yield of 17% -- better than you'll get from nearly any dividend stock in the market.
But there's a trade-off. If on the date of any of those quarterly payments the shares have dropped 35% or more from the price on the day the notes were issued, then you lose the $1,000 you invested. Instead, you'll get about 51.7 Facebook shares per note -- the same number you'd have been able to buy on the issue date before any future price drop. Moreover, if that drop happens early in the note's existence, then you'll miss out on that quarter's payment, as well as the future quarterly payments you would have gotten.
But wait -- there's more!
Even if this deal sounds appealing to you, you won't be able to participate in the Facebook deal -- at least not right now. As the WSJ article, this arrangement was done with a relatively small $1.1 million investment, apparently for a rich Citi client. But a quick search of other structured products revealed several with similar attributes geared toward income-seeking investors:
- A three-and-a-half-year "Buffered Digital Plus Security" on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDEX: ^DJI) that offers a total return of 27% to 32% if the Dow rises, but which pays nothing if the Dow drops and can result in a loss if the Dow drops by more than 10%.
- One-year notes on Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) that are similar to the Facebook securities, with interest of between 8% and 10% as long as Apple doesn't drop more than 20% from the date the notes are issued. If it does, then you'd be stuck with depreciated Apple shares.
- Six-month securities tied to Cobalt International Energy (NYSE: CIE), with monthly income at an annualized rate of 16% to 20% -- again with the potential to leave you with shares at a much lower value if the stock drops 30% or more in that six months.
If you're wondering what's in it for Citi, the answer is simple: All of these products come with selling concession fees ranging from 1.5% to 3%.
Worth the cost?
Obviously, you can't find interest rates like the ones these securities offer just anywhere. It would be possible to duplicate this strategy on your own by putting together a combination of stock and options positions, but in many cases you may well end up giving your broker more in commissions than the 1.5% to 3% concession amount Citi is asking.
With the short-term nature of all these products, though, the real danger is their speculative nature. Regardless of the fundamentals of the stocks and markets involved, anything can happen in such a short period of time. Rather than safe income investments, these are pure gambles on short-term market movements. While you might get lucky, you could just as easily get burned.
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Tune in every Monday and Wednesday for Dan's columns on retirement, investing, and personal finance. You can follow him on Twitter @DanCaplinger.
