TheStreet.com RealMoney

Annuity Providers Could Be Ready to Tumble

By Jim Cramer

About this article:
What kind of business takes your money, gives you a guaranteed minimum return and then invests the money in complex derivative securities or crummy real estate investments? What kind of business takes your money and gives you a guaranteed level of performance, a stop out, plus some upside in the S&P 500, and then doesn't hedge but invests in the same crummy properties? Why it is the annuity business, companies like Hartford Financial Services, Lincoln National and Prudential. These companies, one is to believe from how they are trading, are on the wrong side of every ledger. Why "one is to believe"? Because just like every other financial insurer, they don't disclose much of anything except what they broadly do, and what they broadly do is disastrous. These companies are at the root of so many bad days because nobody knows what happens to them if their...

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