Morgan Stanley Buffered PLUS Securities Lawsuits

Morgan Stanley Buffered PLUS Securities Investment Losses

Have you suffered losses investing in Morgan Stanley Buffered PLUS Securities? If so, The White Law Group may be able to help you recover your losses by filing a FINRA arbitration claim against the brokerage firm that sold you the investment.

The Coronavirus global pandemic is causing massive turmoil in the securities markets.Various banks are calling  mandatory redemptions of certain ETFs and have frozen the trading of others, causing investors huge losses.

Buffered Plus Securities are structured notes issued by Morgan Stanley. Structured note returns are based on, among other things, equity indexes, a single equity security, or a basket of securities.  The return on an investment in a structured note is “linked” to the performance of a specific referenced asset or index.  Structured notes have a fixed maturity and include two components – a bond component and an embedded derivative.  Financial institutions typically design and issue structured notes, and broker-dealers, often for a large commission, sell them to individual investors.

Some common types of structured notes sold to individual investors include: principal protected notes, reverse convertible notes, enhanced participation or leveraged notes, credit linked notes, constant proportion debt obligations, constant proportion portfolio insurance, FX and commodity linked notes, market linked notes, and hybrid notes that combine multiple characteristics.

FINRA Arbitration Investigation involving Structured Callable Notes

The White Law Group is investigating the liability that brokerage firms may have for recommending complex, often extremely high-risk, structured callable note equity linked investments.  With the market in turmoil, many investors who purchased such investments believing they provided downside protection or were akin to bonds because of the dividend component are instead finding that these products can indeed suffer enormous losses.

Brokers often pitch structured products, as providing “downside protection” against losses to a related index while allowing modest upside gain potential. Of course, this is only true if the value of the index doesn’t fall below a predetermined price. If the price falls below that point, the losses in structured notes can still be huge.

These products typically pay a high fee to the financial advisors that sell them.

Sometimes these structured products can have misleading names like market linked certificates of deposit (CDs).

Brokerage firms have two main duties in recommending structured callable notes linked to equity investments or indexes.  First, brokerage firms are required to perform adequate due diligence on any product they recommend. Second, brokerage firms are required to ensure that all recommendations made are suitable for their client in light of the client’s age, investment experience, net worth, income, and investment objectives.

If a brokerage firm fails to do either of these things, the firm can be held responsible in a FINRA arbitration claim.

Unfortunately for investors there are literally hundreds of structured products currently being offered by financial institutions, each with their own underlying risk based on whatever they may be linked to.

If you have suffered losses investing in Morgan Stanley Buffered PLUS Securities, you may be able to recover your losses through FINRA arbitration. For a free consultation with a securities attorney, please call the White Law Group at 888-637-5510.

The White Law Group, LLC is a national securities fraud, securities arbitration, investor protection, and securities regulation/compliance law firm with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Franklin, Tennessee.

For more information on The White Law Group, visit http://whitesecuritieslaw.com.