Florida Personal Injury Lawyers Blog
James Cordier, head of a Tampa hedge fund with clients all over the world, has lost $200 million or more of clients money, which includes Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik.
Cordier founded OptionSellers, named for the financial tool that gives investors the right to buy or sell stocks or commodities at a fixed price.
In trading natural gas options for his clients this month, Cordier assumed that gas prices would drop because of a milder than expected winter. But on Nov. 14, natural gas futures shot up as much as 20 percent — the biggest gain in eight years — and wiped out all of his clients’ investments.
Many of Cordier’s clients also had retirement accounts with a New York brokerage and had borrowed money from those accounts to try to stem their option losses. Now those clients will have to pay back the brokerage.
Our Tampa Bay Negligence Attorneys at Whittel & Melton can help you notice when stockbrokers take unnecessary risks. When stockbrokers are negligent in upholding their fiduciary duty and provide risky investment advice to their clients people can lose large sums of money, as the above article shows. However, people should know that they have rights and recourse to hold negligent stockbrokers accountable for their failure to live up to their fiduciary duties.
Negligence that can lead stockbrokers to give unsuitable investment advice may include stockbrokers’:
- Failure to thoroughly research an investment
- Failure to disclose all of the potential risks associated with the investment
- Failure to provide all material information related to a particular investment
- Failure to provide unbiased investment advice, which could be a form of investment fraud
- Failure to disclose the terms of credit when credit is used to purchase stocks, bonds or mutual funds
If you have experienced losses due to stockbroker negligence, let our Tampa Bay Negligence Attorneys at Whittel & Melton help you. Your initial consultation is completely free, so call us today at 813-221-3200 or contact us online.