Patrick Boyle

The Craziest Ponzi Schemes in History. Top Ten True Crime Stories. A hundred years ago in 1920, Charles Ponzi became famous when his investment scheme collapsed. Ponzi promised to double investors money in three months, at his peak he brought in more than $2 million per week at his offices in downtown Boston.

Ninety years later, Bernie Madoff was all over the news for the same reason. Madoff had taken Ponzis scheme and ran it on a much larger scale. Prosecutors estimated the fraud to be worth $65 billion. While Ponzis scheme burned out in less than six months, Madoffs scheme lasted for twenty years.

Dozens of Ponzi schemes are uncovered every year. The true toll of these Ponzi Schemes on the economy is unknown, but whenever you are being pitched something that seems too good to be true, odds are that it is.
I have put together this collection of the top ten strangest Ponzi schemes, and there are some really crazy schemes out there. Let me know if I have missed out on a good one.

Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/PatrickBoyleOnFinance

0:00 Introduction
2:07 The Yilishen Tianxi Group - Ants
4:37 Susi Emu Farms
6:43 Cassandra Partners
10:05 Buddy Persaud - Astrology
11:24 JCS Enterprises - Virtual Concierge Machine
12:48 Sundown Entertainment - Comic Books
14:15 ZeekRewards
16:00 Mutual Benefits Corporation - Life Insurance
17:42 Greater Ministries International
18:27 Moneytron

Follow up video: https://youtu.be/0v_bq1ih7pI

Number 10
The Yilishen Tianxi Group
More than a million people invested in the Yilishen Tianxi Group by buying and raising boxes of black mountain ants.
Wang Zhendong the companys founder was sentenced to death for this fraud.

Number 9
Susi Emu Farms
M.S. Guru operated Susi Emu Farms, which promised investors a weekly return of $120 in exchange for a $3,000 investment that supposedly purchased a baby emu.

Number 8
Dana Giacchetto and Cassandra Partners
Dana Giacchetto managed money for A-list stars as Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and the cast members of the TV show Friends. He often partied with a cockatoo perched on his shoulder. It turned out he was a pirate.

Number 7
Buddy Persaud, was arrested and charged with operating a Ponzi scheme that promised risk-free returns derived from investing in the futures markets and other markets. His trading strategies were based on lunar cycles and the gravitational pull between Earth and the moon.

Number 6
JCS Enterprises
Investors were told that an investment in JCS Enterprises involved the purchase of a virtual concierge machine that resembled a bank automatic teller machine and allowed users to view advertisements for products or services. Investors were told that their machine would be placed in a business where it could generate lucrative profits.

Number 5
Sundown Entertainment Inc
Sundown Entertainment Inc purported to specialize in the distribution of film and comic-book rights. Potential investors were told that their investment would be used to purchase the rights to old film footage that then would be used to produce and distribute movies and documentaries. Sundown lured investors by promising returns on short-term investments of up to 150%. In total, Sundown raised more than $7 million from over 150 investors.

Number 4
ZeekRewards, solicited investors worldwide to participate in its penny-auction business where participants could “bid” on popular merchandise in 1-cent increments. In addition to the ‘retail” business, the company also promised its “affiliates” hefty returns for recruiting new participants and placing free advertisements on other sites. In return, those “affiliates” were rewarded with daily returns of 1.5%. In total, nearly 1 million “affiliates” would entrust more than $500 million to ZeekRewards.

Number 3
Mutual Benefits Corporation was a Florida based investment sales company that operated

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Go to https://surfshark.com/boyle for 4 extra months of Surfshark

President Trump’s announcement of reciprocal tariffs on April second were more severe than the market expected. On top of a 10 per cent universal minimum tariff, the new regime includes significantly higher tariffs for most major trading partners and brings US effective tariff rates to levels we have not seen since the early 1900s. How will Trump's Liberation Day Tariffs transform global trade?

Patrick's Books:
Statistics For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3eerLA0
Derivatives For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3cjsyPF
Corporate Finance: https://amzn.to/3fn3rvC

Ways To Support The Channel
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PatrickBoyleOnFinance
Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/patrickboyle

Visit our website: https://www.onfinance.org
Follow Patrick on Twitter Here: https://bsky.app/profile/pboyle.bsky.social

Business Inquiries ➡️ [email protected]

Patrick Boyle On Finance Podcast:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7uhrWlDvxzy9hLoW0EYf0b
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/patrick-boyle-on-finance/id1547740313
Google Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/62862nve

Hidden Forces Podcast: https://hiddenforces.io/podcasts/end-of-the-german-economic-miracle-wolfgang-munchau/
Manoj Pradhan & Charles Goodhart - The Great Demographic Reversal: https://amzn.to/42zBaNW
Michael Pettis & Matthew Klein - Trade Wars are Class Wars: https://amzn.to/42kiiB4

Join this channel to support making this content:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCASM0cgfkJxQ1ICmRilfHLw/join

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To try everything Brilliant has to offer for free for a full 30 days, visit https://brilliant.org/patrick/. You’ll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription.

Gregor MacGregor was a Scottish soldier, adventurer, and con man who invented a Central American country called “Poyais,” in 1820 which he claimed to rule as the “Cazique.” MacGregor attempted to draw British and French investors and settlers to his fictional country. Hundreds invested in Poyaisian government bonds and land certificates, while about 250 emigrated to MacGregor’s invented country. MacGregor’s Poyais scheme has been called one of the most brazen confidence tricks in history.

Patrick's Books:
Statistics For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3eerLA0
Derivatives For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3cjsyPF
Corporate Finance: https://amzn.to/3fn3rvC

Ways To Support The Channel
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PatrickBoyleOnFinance
Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/patrickboyle

The Land That Never Was By David Sinclair: https://amzn.to/4eVC3ED

Visit our website: https://www.onfinance.org
Follow Patrick on Twitter Here: https://twitter.com/PatrickEBoyle

Business Inquiries ➡️ [email protected]

Patrick Boyle On Finance Podcast:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7uhrWlDvxzy9hLoW0EYf0b
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/patrick-boyle-on-finance/id1547740313
Google Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/62862nve

Join this channel to support making this content:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCASM0cgfkJxQ1ICmRilfHLw/join

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ad: 🔒Remove your personal information from the web at https://joindeleteme.com/BOYLE and use code BOYLE for 20% off 🙌 DeleteMe international Plans: https://international.joindeleteme.com

Donald Trump has promised to slash the US’s high prescription medication prices by as much as 80 per cent with an executive order that seeks to force other countries to pay more for their medicines.

“Americans will no longer be forced to pay almost three times more for the exact same medicines, often made in the exact same factories,” the order said. “As the largest purchaser of pharmaceuticals, Americans should get the best deal.”

Patrick's Books:
Statistics For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3eerLA0
Derivatives For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3cjsyPF
Corporate Finance: https://amzn.to/3fn3rvC

Ways To Support The Channel
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PatrickBoyleOnFinance
Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/patrickboyle

Visit our website: https://www.onfinance.org
Follow Patrick on Twitter Here: https://bsky.app/profile/pboyle.bsky.social

Business Inquiries ➡️ [email protected]

Patrick Boyle On Finance Podcast:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7uhrWlDvxzy9hLoW0EYf0b
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/patrick-boyle-on-finance/id1547740313
Google Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/62862nve

Join this channel to support making this content:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCASM0cgfkJxQ1ICmRilfHLw/join

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Todays video is based on Mondays Wall Street Journal article on Leveraged ETN's called “Bankrupt in just two weeks, Individual investors get burned by collapse of complex securities". by Akane Otani. We will learn about levered ETN’s and the investors who have seen their retirement savings evaporate because of them. We will learn the difference between an ETF and an ETN. Stay tuned to the end where I will explain why a two times leveraged product doesn’t actually give you twice the long term return of the index it is tracking, just twice the one day return. We will also learn about inverse ETN's like the XIV the short volatility ETN that blew up in 2018.

Patricks' Derivatives Book: https://amzn.to/2J2kF3A
Patricks' Statistics For Traders Book: https://amzn.to/36CyPDt
Patricks' Corporate Finance Book: https://amzn.to/3cbMcM1
Visit our website: www.onfinance.org
Follow Patrick on Twitter Here: https://twitter.com/PatrickEBoyle
Royalty Free Music from Bensound"

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Todays we look at the investing adage "Sell in May and Go Away" Does it make sense today and is it a good general rule? Let's examine the statistics.

Buy Patrick's Book Here: https://amzn.to/2J2kF3A
Visit our website: www.onfinance.org
Follow Patrick on Twitter Here: https://twitter.com/PatrickEBoyle

US stocks finished their biggest monthly rally this April since 1987. The market rose 12.7% over the month, cutting the coronavirus-driven losses on the S&P 500 to about 10 per cent year to date, despite an economic shock far greater than the financial crisis a decade ago.

Some investors have expressed doubts about whether the rallies have further to run but are reluctant to bet against the massive interventions by central banks and governments around the world.

The rally in equities is not driven by fundamentals but by the liquidity support from the Federal Reserve.

The rally has been led by the tech sector that dominate the US stock market. Amazon and Netflix have both gained more than 40 per cent from their mid-March lows, benefiting from the shutdowns around the world that have kept billions of people indoors, reliant on home delivery and streaming entertainment.

A big gap between signals from the commodities and bond markets, which indicate expectations for a long period of low growth and stocks, which are pricing in a strong rebound for economic growth and corporate earnings. It is a tug of war between central bank policy and stock fundamentals. Right now, policy is winning.

Howard Marks of Oaktree recently said on CNBC “We're only down 15% from the all-time high of February 19, and it seems to me the world is more than 15% screwed up.

"It took seven years to get back to the 2000 highs in 2007," Marks told CNBC. "It took five-and-a-half years to get back to the 2007 highs in late 2012."

"Is it really appropriate that, given all the bad news in the world today, we should get back to the highs in only three months? That seems inappropriately positive," he added.

So, does the Halloween Indicator actually work?

Looking at S&P500 monthly returns from 1928 to present we can see that November - April Returns are on average +5.1% while May – October returns average out at +2.1%

An academic paper by Jacobsen and Bouman from 1998, which was updated in 2009 finds that this inherited wisdom is true in 36 of the 37 developed and emerging markets that they studied. The 'Sell in May' effect tends to be particularly strong in European countries and is robust over time. Sample evidence, for instance, shows that in the UK the effect has been noticeable since 1694.

So, what is the lesson of this? Should investors follow every investing adage that they hear? No, hopefully your take-away from this piece is that most ideas that are testable should be tested. It took less than fifteen minutes for me to download the monthly data and study this effect.

While returns are indeed lower over the summer half of the year, there is a general positive expectation associated with investing in stocks. If you want to have a handful of winning investment rules, the best way to get them is to download some stock market data from the internet and test your ideas.


Sell in May and Go Away 2020

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ad: 🔒Remove your personal information from the web at https://joindeleteme.com/BOYLE and use code BOYLE for 20% off
🙌🏻 DeleteMe international Plans: https://international.joindeleteme.com

Britain once built world-class infrastructure with speed and purpose—now it plans ideas like a £24 billion extension cords to Morocco that are unlikely to ever work. This video dives into the rise and fall of the Xlinks Morocco–UK Power Project, exploring how overcomplication, bespoke design, and regulatory gridlock have turned modern megaprojects into cautionary tales. From fish discos at Hinkley Point C to 31,000-page environmental assessments, we ask: have we forgotten how to build? And what can we learn from countries like Ireland in the 1920s—or South Korea today—about getting big things done?

Patrick's Books:
Statistics For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3eerLA0
Derivatives For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3cjsyPF
Corporate Finance: https://amzn.to/3fn3rvC

Ways To Support The Channel
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PatrickBoyleOnFinance
Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/patrickboyle

Visit our website: https://www.onfinance.org
Follow Patrick on Twitter Here: https://bsky.app/profile/pboyle.bsky.social

Business Inquiries ➡️ [email protected]

@TheDavidMcWilliams link: https://youtu.be/niZ1OBQnODw?si=z3mVIIirWfDLE8Mw
@commonsenseskeptic link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPYWyqy1hng&t=7s

Patrick Boyle On Finance Podcast:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7uhrWlDvxzy9hLoW0EYf0b
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/patrick-boyle-on-finance/id1547740313
Google Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/62862nve

Join this channel to support making this content:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCASM0cgfkJxQ1ICmRilfHLw/join

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Go to https://ground.news/PB to stay ahead of the curve on all things finance. Subscribe through my link to save 40% off unlimited access this month.

U.S. stocks are expected to get a short-term boost in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump over the weekend, as analysts say the likelihood of his victory in November has increased. Trump's lead has extended itself since Biden's poor debate performance two weeks ago which left his biggest supporters concerned about the president's ability to handle the rigors of another four years in office.

Will the stock market do better under Trump or Biden?

Patrick's Books:
Statistics For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3eerLA0
Derivatives For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3cjsyPF
Corporate Finance: https://amzn.to/3fn3rvC

Ways To Support The Channel
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PatrickBoyleOnFinance
Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/patrickboyle

Business Inquiries ➡️ [email protected]

Additional Resources
Victor Niederhoffer – Presidential Elections & The Stock Market: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4470664?seq=1
Trevor Jennewine: https://www.fool.com/investing/2024/07/05/average-stock-market-return-democrat-republican-pr/
Political Cycles & Industry Returns – Stangl & Jacobsen:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=864804

Hidden Forces - Henry Olsen Interview: https://hiddenforces.io/podcasts/rise-of-the-new-right-2024-u-s-elections-henry-olsen/

Visit our website: https://www.onfinance.org
Follow Patrick on Twitter Here: https://twitter.com/PatrickEBoyle

Patrick Boyle On Finance Podcast:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7uhrWlDvxzy9hLoW0EYf0b
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/patrick-boyle-on-finance/id1547740313
Google Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/62862nve

Join this channel to support making this content:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCASM0cgfkJxQ1ICmRilfHLw/join

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To try everything Brilliant has to offer for free for a full 30 days, visit https://brilliant.org/patrick/. You’ll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription.

There has been a lot of press on how Europe is facing deindustrialization, where manufacturing employment is in terminal decline and the continent can no longer compete due to high energy prices, economic competition, and other factors. In today's video we try to work out if Europe is doomed and should it pivot towards tourism - becoming the world's museum.

Patrick's Books:
Statistics For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3eerLA0
Derivatives For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3cjsyPF
Corporate Finance: https://amzn.to/3fn3rvC

Ways To Support The Channel
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PatrickBoyleOnFinance
Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/patrickboyle

Visit our website: https://www.onfinance.org
Follow Patrick on Twitter Here: https://twitter.com/PatrickEBoyle

Business Inquiries ➡️ [email protected]

Patrick Boyle On Finance Podcast:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7uhrWlDvxzy9hLoW0EYf0b
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/patrick-boyle-on-finance/id1547740313
Google Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/62862nve

Helpful Links:
Mario Draghi Report: https://commission.europa.eu/topics/strengthening-european-competitiveness/eu-competitiveness-looking-ahead_en
Oxford Economics: https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/claims-of-deindustrialisation-in-europe-are-overblown/

Join this channel to support making this content:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCASM0cgfkJxQ1ICmRilfHLw/join

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The NYSE is one of the few exchanges to still feature open outcry floor trading - most have shifted to fully-electronic or algorithmic trading.

Financial markets have continued to trade throughout the 2020 lockdown, but the exchange's trading floor was closed from 23 March and activity temporarily moved to fully-electronic trading to protect workers. Now it has reopened, but with new social distancing rules, today the exchange looks and feels very different.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was on hand to ring the bell that re-started in-person trade, a sign of the symbolic weight attached to the reopening.

Todays video looks at two academic papers with contrasting views as to if pit trading still makes sense in 2020 or are exchanges more efficient when fully electronic?

"Vestigial Tails: Floor Brokers at the Close in Modern Electronic Markets,” by Edwin Hu and Dermot Murphy, found that NYSE’s crucial 4 p.m. auctions, which determine end-of-day prices for thousands of stocks, ran more smoothly after the Big Board closed its floor. NYSE of course has questioned the study’s conclusions.

A second study by Brogaard, Ringgenberg and Rösch argued that markets got worse without floor traders. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, they argue that floor traders are important contributors to market quality, even in the age of algorithmic trading. The suspension of floor trading leads to higher effective spreads, volatility, and pricing errors.

Patricks' Derivatives Book: https://amzn.to/2J2kF3A
Patricks' Statistics For Traders Book: https://amzn.to/36CyPDt
Patricks' Corporate Finance Book: https://amzn.to/3cbMcM1
Visit our website: www.onfinance.org

Follow Patrick on Twitter Here: https://twitter.com/PatrickEBoyle

Royalty Free Music from Bensound"

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices