The answer is, overwhelmingly, insurance companies peddling high-cost, tax-deferred variable annuities with crappy proprietary mutual fund options and high-risk fixed accounts.
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Even the IRS Commissioner pleaded with Congressional leaders that it had to be fixed asap or risk major upheaval for 21 million more taxpayers.
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For decades, US government bonds were the gold standard for long-term, risk free fixed income investors.
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The higher bond prices go because of demand from risk averse fixed income investors, the lower yields go.
There is still a fair amount of risk in fixed income, either from inflation or interest rate increases.
The greatest risk facing fixed income investors may not be the European crisis, but how to manage the coming rise in U.S. interest rates.
And a more serious drawback, seen in Thailand, is that by appearing to eliminate currency risk a fixed rate encourages firms and banks to borrow heavily in foreign currency at cheaper interest rates than on domestic funds.
Keep in mind that municipal securities are subject to a number of risks including, but not limited to: Interest Rate Risk, the risk that the market value of fixed-income securities may fluctuate when interest rates change, and Prepayment Risk, the risk that the issuers of individual securities may prepay them at a time when interest rates have declined.
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The modules also can be redeployed as needed, thus mitigating the risk of a fixed installation by eliminating stranded infrastructure costs.
If the instinct to avoid risk were universal, fixed-rate home mortgages would not exist.
Special Offer: Why bother with stocks when you can beat the pants off of them with fixed income while taking on less risk?
Lowering risk is not about buying fixed income or putting money away in CDs or money markets.
The pursuit of higher yields in the fixed income world poses an entirely different risk than stocks.
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Interest rate risk is inherent to all fixed income and, after a decade of declining yields, rising interest rates will cut into portfolio total returns.
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Fixed income investors are getting paid for risk taking in countries like Brazil, where interest rates are around 9 percent for short term government bonds priced in the local currency, and as much as 3.5 percent for sovereign bonds priced in dollars.
The notion that you can withdraw a fixed amount every month carries a lot of risk.
Let me be clear, this is fundamentally a decent economic model there are no expensive fixed costs and the merchant bears the inventory risk.
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Although the investments resembled bonds, paying buyers a fixed interest rate for taking on the default risk of corporate debt, the products invested in synthetic collateralized debt obligations held by Lehman.
For not all bonds are created equal, and investors may be unwittingly increasing their exposure to equity risk by allocating portions of their fixed income exposure to high-yield bonds, which behave much like equities.
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Insurance companies often have long term liabilities that they wish to hedge, which require low risk and predictable cash flows and fixed income securities such as government bonds that offer a predictable stream of payments by way of interest and principal payments.
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Fixed annuities sales soared during 2008-09 economic crisis when consumers had low risk appetite but the growing pace of market recovery has led to a decline in sales of fixed annuities.
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Investors are increasingly channeling their money into higher risk ETFs and away from more conservative fixed-income funds.
They fail to grasp the potential benefits of a long-term fixed-rate loan because they do not understand risk properly.
But such mortgages are cheaper than fixed-rate mortgages, because they shift the risk of interest-rate fluctuations from lender to borrower.
Take, for example, one indicator of the market's appetite for risk, the spread between swaps of fixed- and floating-rate interest payments (see chart).
While allocations to bonds may vary based upon market conditions and investor objectives and risk appetites, bonds (or other fixed income-oriented strategies) can typically find a home in most investment portfolios throughout most market cycles.
The Tote will also keep its seven-year monopoly on pool betting (where stakes are pooled and the winners take the lot, minus taxes and an administration charge, as opposed to fixed-odds betting where the bookmaker bears the risk).
The county got the stability of a fixed rate, while paying Wall Street to assume the risk of the variable rates on its bonds.
Late Monday, Purcell made co-presidents out of Zoe Cruz , head of fixed income, and Stephen Crawford , the chief administrative and risk officer, pushing aside current President Stephan Newhouse .
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