HSBC investment ripoff
 

I have recently just stopped my saving "scheme" with HSBC as their performance was dreadful.After just over2 years they lost me US$7 000 and then to withdraw my remaining US$104 000 they charged me US$21 700.They charged me 1.5 % per year to manage my losses and put in a grand total of US$80 for my troubles.Just to let you know that they are basically a very dishonest bank.A Hong Kong based pilot.

Not just HSBC, but pretty much the entire consumer financial industry runs like this. High sales charges on the way in, high management fees (for funds that consistently underperform), charges for switching, charges on redemption. It is a difficult game at the best of times, but in this type of scheme, the cards are rigged against you. Meanwhile the bank takes your invested capital, and makes money with it by investing it directly. They win, you lose..

"Just to let you know that they are basically a very dishonest bank" - Now that's an understatement!

They're a bunch of crooks and no better than the drug lords and terrorists whom they openly admitted doing business with!

..perhaps they should be kicked off the premises of CX's headquarters, unless of course the company is happy doing business with these thugs. Oh, hold on a minute, they're all part of the same Swire Mafia :eek:

Thugs? Get over yourself. They're a bank, like any other.

Read the terms and conditions. Before you throw hundreds of thousands of dollars into a scheme. That way, you're:

A) educated as to the charges
B) consequently not likely to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars into it.

I use HSBC, and they have been great. I use them for....... Storing my money. And an investment account for stocks. I'm in control.

"They're a bank, like any other". Urggh...yes, they're thugs then. Why has he got to get over himself for stating a verifiable fact?!

"They're a bank, like any other"
Yes ETOPS240, Standard Chartered Bank comes to mind!
Standard Chartered rejects US claims

Keep storing your money with them mate - hope there's still something left after they've paid all their fines.
HSBC sets aside $700m for money-laundering fines | Business | The Guardian :ok:

Bankers are absolute scumbags, end of!

Stunning Crimes of the Big Banks: Worse than Your Wildest Imagination - Washington's Blog

Keiser Report: Crooks, Crime, Chaos (E324) - YouTube

Why does banker sound like ******?

Q. What is the collective noun for bankers?

A. A Wunch.

That's a fact, a collection of them is a called "Wunch of Bankers"

Remember that when you "give" your money to a bank or investment advisor or broker you are buying something. You are buying a service, like many others.

That brings you into the realms of "Caveat Emptor" or let the buyer beware. This came from a ruling that however devious and illegal a seller might be there is a responsibility in law that each individual should take care to protect his own interests in a transaction.

I do not pity for one moment the drongoes who are camped out under the HSBC building, and have been making working in Central unpleasant in the last year. They were offered complex financial products. If they did not understand them, they should have walked away. They claim "Miss selling" but the real problem is "Miss buying". In the Cantonese vernacular, if you buy an old fish, you are too old to go to market.

The opportunity to make an unusually high return is the first red flag in investing. If I it looks too good to be true it probably is...

Understand that the investment advisors (heck even the retail tellers) in the biggest and most respected banks in the world are on a commission to sell to you, like a real estate agent, a jeweller or a waiter in a top restaurant. If you sense a hard sell, back off as politely or as rudely as is your natural character.

So to return to the thread, Not Orange got burned, he is unlikely to be burned in the same way again. Most of us have been at some time in our lives, for " The world is full of trickery". We all learn from these tricks, and we get smarter the next time. Don't whine about it, just get back into the world as a wiser trader. There is always another sucker for you to tap.

There are still some great investment opportunities around, and the more you learn the better it gets.

The trouble is Moosp when they sell too many of those dodgy items you mentioned crashing the world economy in the process, it's no longer a case of "Caveat Emptor" as we have to bail the bastards out and we don't even have a choice! This then allows them to repeat the cycle, disguising their malfeasance in more devious ways, leading to yet another crash, rinse and repeat.
We've reached the stage now where I think most people aren't buying into their phony products but they have received so many hand outs from the Fed/ECB/BOE, they no longer need our participation in the ponzi scheme. They just take the free money and front run whatever the respective central bank wants, the biggest ponzi scheme known to man! The small scale investments we are talking about here in Cathay is small change to these robber barons, they're too busy processing drug money, manipulating libor, miss-selling interest rate swaps to municipal authorities. :ugh:

Here is another example of crap figures provided by HSBC.

DEPOSIT PLUS return of up to 12% p/a. Here you basically play two currencies. Let say the AUD and USD. you invest $50000 in one or the other and you set a strike price two week later at a predetermined level. If the price come good you then buy the other currency. Normally if all goes well you might make 0.2% in that transaction. Now to get the 12% you have to do it again , and again and again, for the other 50 weeks.

If they ALL go as planned, then you will achieve 12% . We all know that that is not going to happen, most probably if you are lucky after 12 months you will be even or down 12%.

Silver is the way to go!
Around $27/ounce at present.
Expected to be $200-$300 /ounce by 2016 the latest or mabey even more!!!

Gold is far from ceiling altitude yet!

When you see ads on the TV for "cash for gold"... You know its a good time to invest in the only safe thing on this planet!

Mate of mine invested in Gold in 2006 (the rest of us laughed at him while we poured money into property) None of us are laughing at him now... So far he has made over 500% interest and he hasn't sold yet!

HSBC Deposit Plus
 

this is the greatest rip-off ever:
you invest money in a foreign currency, but they will skim off any currency exchange rate earnings (and pay out only the interest incurred), but leave you to suffer any currency rate losses if your linked currency tanks...
beware of this scam.

What it boils down to is a fundamental argument. Do banks exist to be a source of capital to be efficiently allocated across the economy OR do they exist to enrich themselves through complex financial instruments that they themselves barely understand? Thirty years ago I would have said the former, now though. after LIBOR fixing and a myriad of other scandals it seems that banking has descended into institutionalized gambling.


Ask yourself what you would think if your son or daughter came to you and said they wanted to become an investment banker?

my son is an investment banker. Total bonuses 2008 thru 2011.....$4.6 mill usd. No, i'm not disappointed. :)

Investment Banking.
 

mngmnt, How proud you must be!

I am sure that he is worth every cent (to you anyway).

If my son wanted to be a banker, I would say to him to go for it.

Life as a pilot going forward is going to be come less and less attractive.

The Bankers are protecting their bonus culture from the top level , so it will be here to stay, no matter how we hate them.:mad:

As a Pilot, the top levels are fighting to reduce everyone to the the lowest common denominator so that they can get the bonus not us. So guess who will succeed in this.:yuk:

There's more to life than money, that's the trouble with CX, we're all mercenaries chasing the dirty dollar. I wish to walk out of this life into the next one with some semblance of my integrity intact, can we say the same about bankers, like hell we can!

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