Malaysians And Internet Investments …

Many people are getting started with Internet Marketing everyday. Some really want to build a business, while some are hyped into the quick cash ideas.

Here in Malaysia, Internet investment also known as high yield investment programmes are getting the headlines everywhere, TV news, radios, newspapers, magazines. Even politicians are talking about them.

But where ever they are being mentioned here in Malaysia, they all say that it’s an illegal activity.

My say? Is it illegal? Well … depends.

First, I am not a lawyer or any legal expert. Consult your lawyer before taking any actions on anything that I say.

If the investment operators are operating in Malaysia, then yes, it’s illegal. And I don’t know about the legality of other countries.

Here in Malaysia, you cannot take money from the public as deposit. You have to be licensed by Bank Negara Malaysia (National Bank). And when you are taking investment money, in a way, you are taking deposits.

Same goes with companies that are taking investment money from the public to invest them in international forex or futures. Yes, there are a few of those here. It’s not that investing in forex or futures is the problems. But companies that are persuading the public to invest $50,000 MYR to $500,000 MYR in those markets are breaking the law.

OK, those are for people who are operating the investment programmes. How about those who are investing in the programmes, or the investors itself.

Well, the way I see it, you have to be well-informed about these programmes before you invest. When you lose money, unless you are cheated into investing, then it’s totally your fault.

Don’t get me wrong here. When wanting to invest, always, always, investigate. Always find out all that you can about the investment that you are considering. You always do that when you want to buy a house. You always to that when you want to buy stocks. You always do that when you want to buy anything else. So why not when it comes to Internet investments?

Or is it because that you are a sucker. You drool over the opportunity of 300% return in 30 days, or the opportunity of 5% daily interest.

When you see those number, didn’t it occur to you – where did the money come from?

It did for me. And I read all that I can in those websites.

And the normal answer is forex and futures. Yes, you can make a lot of money in forex and futures. Infact, if you are an expert trader, you can even make 500% return in a day. But then again, with forex and futures, do you know that profit and loss can go both ways?

You can profit in the bull (naturally) and you can also profit in the bear (really?!). But that also means you lose money both way too.

With forex and futures, you put a little sum of money to have control over a bigger amount of money. For example, you put $100 to buy $10,000 worth of soy beans in the market. When the market goes upward and your $10,000 soy beans are now worth $10,500, you make $500 in profit. You just made $400 with the investment of $100.

But many people are so hooked on the opportunity that they forget the risk.

You can also lose money. If you put down $100 to buy $10,000 worth of soy beans, and then the price goes downward by $500, your soy beans are now worth $9,500. With the investment of $100, you know owe the broker $400.

Unlike stocks, with forex and futures, you can go into negative balance with your investments. You can even lose your shorts!

So that is the nature of these types of investment. Before I get back to where the money comes from, I’d like to discuss more about the nature of high yeild investment companies.

Here in Malaysia, I always see that people always go for one or two specific companies. There’s always one or two companies that is making the most noise at a time. For example SwissCash, ABInvestment and so on. What Malaysians are not aware of is that there are hundreds of similar programmes on the Internet. Check out http://www.talkgold.com/.

If you really want to go for these types of investments, why go fanatic over one or two programmes? You should research the market for more options.

And if you realize one thing about high yield investment programmes, they always operate anonymously.

When you look for the company’s name and address, you normally find just a contact form. And even when there’s an address, you can be certain that the address is just a PO box or maybe a shared virtual office address. Even I can get an address any where in the world within 48 hours.

And that same address is what they use with their domain name registration.

The hard fact is that it’s almost impossible to track down the operator behind the investment programme.

And because you can’t really track them down, there’s no way for you to know what they really do with your money. They can say on the website that they do forex, or futures. But could they do sports betting professionally? Or maybe sponsoring a professional online poker player?

You can never know. If you are religious, or you have a thing against gambling, and benefiting from those types of profit, then you ought wake up and realise this.

And another hard fact is that high yield investment programme operators will always disappear some day or another. It could be tomorrow, next week, next month or maybe even two years from now. You don’t know. But you can bet on it that they will disappear.

Here’s what I’ve concluded after observing high yield investment programmes. When they are starting out, they will offer programmes like 3.5% daily earning, or maybe 100% return over a month period or something like that.

And they will work hard to get new people to sign-up. They might also have a referral or affiliate programme where they reward members for referring new members. This maybe a one-time bounty like $50 for each new member you refer.

What they want to achieve in this early period is to gain your trust. So they will always payout on time during this period. Here’s what happen when you have trusted them. One; you will refer new members. Two; you will re-invest your profits.

And this goes on until they have the amount of money that they are targeting for. Maybe they are going for one million dollars of deposit. Maybe they are going for half a million. Nobody knows what the number is. And you can never know how much money they have with them. When they have achieve that, it could be the time when they do the disappearing act

Every now and then, people ask me about Internet investment programmes. They mention this domain or that domain. My answer will always be the same. I will explain all that I have explained in this article. And then I tell them …

If you want to invest in forex, futures, high yield investment or any other Internet investment programmes, do it on your own, and do it on your own account. If you make money, you make money. If you lose money – don’t complain.