Any Janus investors here?

[trof]

I know, I know...this should be in the Economics forum, but nobody goes there much.
I lost a bunch of my IRA at Janus before I finally pulled the plug a year and a half ago. I figured I was just SOL until I learned about the current investigation of nefarious practices by Janus, among others, by Eliot Spitzer, N.Y. attorney general.
I sent him an e-mail this morning, telling him I was mad as hell and wanted my money back.

If you lost money at Janus, here's the a.g. website.

http://www.oag.state.ny.us/home.html

[Superfly]

1. You mean "Juh-Anus"

Best advice: Go to a ethical full service broker and buy from funds such as Lord Abbett, American, Putnam.

Brian

[catzies]

2. Well, my Putnam funds suffered the same fate as trof's Janus funds

I stopped contributing over a year ago, and when I break even, I'm selling.

My Putnams have been dogs from day one and I bought them from an ethical full service broker.

Just because we haven't heard yet that Putnam's funds or managers aren't implicated in this current scandal doesn't mean they wont'be be in the next.

When the Enron/Worldcom/Global Crossing problems came to light starting 3 years ago, it was said that was only the tip of the iceberg. Now we're seeing another tip. We have yet to have the full iceberg revealed.

[Superfly]

7. So, I take it you are a mattress investor

Putnam recently had a reorganization of their management team to realign their goals with those of their investors.

I heartily recommend Putnam Funds.

[catzies]

21. No, my money never moved. I just stopped buying into the bottom

Of that particular plank of my investment platform. I'm letting it ride. Selling them would be a considerable loss to eat even into the foreseeable future. And no, when I pull that money out it doesn't go under my matters. :wtf:

Of the 8 Putnam funds in my Roth IRA, two have come back considerably this year.

But I find your statement telling, "Realign their goals" indeed. They were out of whack or they wouldn't have realigned, now would they? ;)

[trof]

5. It's a long story.

My account was at Fidelity when I had the Janus funds.
Fidelity totally screwed up my account and it took several weeks to straighten it out. They were very unresponsive. Since I'm nowhere near a Fidelity office, everything had to be done by e-mail, snail mail, phone, and fax. At one point I was so frustrated I sent a registered letter to the CEO (forget his name now) and got NO RESPONSE.
I switched to Schwab who has an office in Pensacola where I can deal with someone face-to-face.

I will never buy a mutual fund again. Probably not a common stock, either. I'm now invested in solid, conservative preferred stocks with an average return of 8+%.

[Superfly]

8. You're not realizing the full potential of the market, then

I put my wife's investments in a blend of
Lord Abbet Bond Debenture
Lord Abbet Mid Cap Value
Lord Abbet Affiliated

So far, for this year, we are on track for a 13% return on our investment. I invested all in Lord Abbett to take advantage of break points.

[trof]

13. I'm guessing you're a lot younger than I am.

Thanks for the response. When I was younger I was willing to assume more risk. I'm 62 and retired now, and this is IT. I'm very happy with 8% and I can sleep at night with the preferreds I have. I had a good sized chunk in a bond fund a few years back and then found they are/can be much more volatile than I wanted. If interest rates edge back up, a lot of bond funds share prices will drop like a rock. Been there.

The down & dirty plan I follow now:
Buy solid, even "stodgy", preferreds
1. at or below par
2. callable within 6 months to a year
3. but be willing to hold them to maturity.

Tip o' the day: DELTA AIR LINES 8.125% SR. NOTES Symbol DNT
$25 PAR CALLABLE 7/1/04
I got some at $15 & change. Last time I checked they're selling for around $18.50 still which works out to a ROI of around 14%. All the airlines are in trouble (except Southwest and Jet Blue) but Delta has the strongest balance sheet of the majors. I think they'll call this expensive debt asap next July and they'll have to pay $25 a share to redeem them. Didn't bet the ranch, by a long shot, but if this works out it'll be a nice piece of change.

Here's where I get my info and sift through them
http://www.quantumonline.com/pfdtable.cfm?Type=All&SortColumn=Company&SortOrder=ASC
If you don't have broadband it takes a l o n g time to download.

[gWbush is Mabus]

3. instead

go buy some exchange traded funds (ETFs)

and use scottrade

[catzies]

4. Yup. Took both of those actions already. Good advice.

My regular IRA is with Scottrade and is all in dividend-paying ETF bond funds.

My Putnam funds are my Roth IRA, and it's complicated to move it, which is why I'm waiting for it to break even before I do. But the plan is to move it from Putnam to Scottrade, sell all the mutuals, and buy only ETFs.

[Robb]

6. Not to sound stupid

But what's the issue, exactly? I'm into the Twenty fund for my Roth.

Seasoning a new carbon steel wok, BTW. :hi:

[trof]

16. What I think I know and what I think I've heard:

What I think I know: Say you put an order in to buy shares of a MF (interesting abbreviation now that I look at it ;-)) at 10 a.m. You get them at whatever the price is at 4 p.m. after market close. The value of your fund is recalculated only ONCE a day at market close. If you put your order in at 5 p.m. (AFTER market close), you get them at the NEXT day's closing price. For a long time this hasn't seemed right to me. I could do several paragraphs on the whys and wherefores. ETFs (Exchanged Traded Funds) IMHO are much better because they trade from minute to minute, just like stocks. I could do more paragraphs on the whys of that too.

What I think I've heard: Evidently Janus (and others) allowed BIG investors (institutions, insurance companies, and such) to trade after hours at the previous closing price. These guys got a HUGE advantage that we small fry didn't.

If I understand it right...if you had an indication that the share price would increase the next day you could buy in at today's price, after the market closed, and sell tomorrow after market close and take your profit.

Don't know if I have a leg to stand on with the NY AG's investigation, but it's more of a chance than what I had before.

[denverbill]

9. I got hammered too.

Then again, so did many many other funds. Janus was one of the most aggressive in pursuing tech stocks. If there was a high-flyer, they were in on it. They made TONS of money for investors who bought in in the mid 1990's to 2000. But they got their asses kicked in the tech correction.

If I find out that the losses really were do to mismanagement and insiders profits robbed the fund, that's one thing, but if 99% of the losses were just because they invested in high-risk, high-reward stocks, that's quite another. I invested in them for the risk-reward.

Even with the major beatings the funds took over the last 3 years, over the last 10 years, many Janus funds still beat the competition.

[LuLu550]

10. My brother

the one who thought he'd be the first "millionaire" in the family....
now he's working for $10 an hour in a restaurant trying not to lose his house..you get the picture.

[trof]

19. I was a millionaire

for about 6 months at the top of the tech bubble, if you count TOTAL assets. Of course it helped a lot that our house has more than doubled in worth in the last 10 years.

Didn't let it go to my head. Still driving a 15 year old pick up.
;-)

[curlyred]

11. that would be me, too

My 401k is but a former shadow of itself........

[FlashHarry]

12. Two-faced bastards!

[trof]

17. This guy?

[GOPisEvil]

14. I guess my Janus Balanced Fund isn't so balanced!

:grr:

Does this include Janus funds purchased through 401(k)'s? Or only purchased directly from Janus?

[trof]

15. All the same funds

Janus is Janus. Doesn't matter how or where you bought them.

[Chovexani]

18. My mom is

But not for long. She's been trying to move money out for some time in order to renovate the kitchen, but they've been jerking her around. We saw the ABC News report last night about Spitzer and weren't surprised.

Altogether she's lost about $15,000. That's a lot of money for a nurse. She ought to be retired now (she retired from the VA after 30 years) but she works per diem at two different jobs just to make ends meet.

This shit is just criminal.

Oh, and BTW, Janus funds were also heavily invested in Enron! I didn't know till my mom told me.

[trof]

20. Oh yeah, forgot about Enron.

The "smart" folks at Janus bought a sh*tpot load of Enron, even after the wheels started coming off. Due diligence? I thought I hired them because they were smarter than me about investing.
:grr: