Investment advice

The below company is offering some hug ROI. Anyone here heard of them or have any experience with them?
http://www.threadneedle.com/en/global/default.aspx<BR>

No idea, but go to Motley Fool..they have a forum there and post it...somebody will know there...they normally do!

treadneedle is a serious & well known english investment / fond - company. I have something invested with them.

It never occured to me that their ROI would be much different than that of other companies resp. the general market, though.

5 % is a ROI not to write home about
10 % is good
15 % is even better

.....

would -20% than qualify as a huge ROI ? :-)

you have to admit, it would be quite big, wouldn't it ?

Two problems with your assumption of "guarantee".

Sovereign debt carries sovereign risk. The country may default or could force bondholders to renegotiate the debt in a crisis. Had you been holding Russian bonds in 1998 or Argentinian ones in 2002, you would have been burned. Such a case will resut in a large loss in the market value of these bonds. Most people don't carry debt securities to maturity, so therefore not only is the interest payments important but the resale value of the bonds is as well.

Any time you purchase assets denominated in currencies other than your base currency, you are exposed to exchange rate risk. Taking the Greek bonds in #5, assume your base currency is USD, if the Greek drachma loses 28% of its value in the meantime, you have earned nothing in a year even with the 28% interest.

In the case of #5, he'll probably say that he was living in Greece at the time. Then he wasn't exposed to exchange rate risk.

Let me emphasize again that no investment plan can "offer" any specific ROI.

Another point I forgot to mention. Your real rate of return on any investment is nominal return minus the inflation rate. Assets denominated in currnecies with a history of high inflation must have higher yields to be attractive. The exchange rate of the Greek drachma has dropped from 30 to USD 1 in 1973 to as low as 400 in 2001. Averaged out this is an annual inflation rate of a little under 10% a year. But this average hides considerable fluctuations; the rate was as high as 23% in 1990. This history of fluctuating inflation rate makes the currency riskier to outsiders, thus such assets must offer even higher yields for them to be attractive.

Going back to the Greek government bonds, if their coupon yield was 28% but the inflation rate of the drachma was 20%, then your real yield is 8%.

metem, old soul, you missed my humorous point here, -20 %, spelling M I N U S *

actually, thinking about it, I would even GUARANTEE you THIS performance of you decided to load a stack of cash upon me, hehe :-))