Investors

OCEAN CITY, N.J. - Luxury appointments abound in the 7,000-square-foot, 12-year-old Victorian-style mansion overlooking Great Bay, such as a marble fireplace that once graced a Biddle estate mansion, a crystal chandelier that at the touch of a button lowers from the 30-foot foyer ceiling for cleaning, and boat slips big enough to berth a pair of yachts. A "smart house" system controls window treatments, lighting, heating, air-conditioning, and music. Slate-covered turrets, little secret gardens, and gingerbread-laden porches make the exterior look more like Cape May than Ocean City.

Chesapeake Energy's meltdown has crippled its share price and that of a subsidiary. It's a case study in how risky it can be to invest in one stock. It also shows how energy exchange-traded funds can help blunt the effects of one company's implosion. As is now well-known, Chesapeake Energy's chief executive, Aubrey McClendon, took out more than $1 billion in shrouded personal loans backed by assets of the public company — and investors have demanded he step down as chairman.

Radnor energy company Penn Virginia Resource Partners L.P. on Monday announced $380 million in new pipelines serving Marcellus Shale natural gas drillers, continuing its expansion in Pennsylvania's booming shale-gas region. PVR, which has rapidly transformed itself from a coal company to a natural-gas pipeline company, said it has entered into long-term agreements to extend its Lycoming County system to collect and process gas from the wells of four gas drillers, including some of the biggest producers in northern Pennsylvania.

Investors who sued the federal government in 1993 for breaking its promises in its seizure of Meritor Savings Bank won a judgment yesterday of $371.7 million, but it could be several more years before they see the money. U.S. Claims Court Judge Loren A. Smith wrote that Meritor investors have strong arguments to receive an additional $402 million, but said he would leave that question to an appeal of his award. Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said the government was still reviewing the decision, and hasn't decided how to respond.

Many financial advisors have the same advice for nervous investors unhinged by the stock market's wild mood swings in recent days: Take a deep breath. Come in off the ledge. Don't panic. "The worst thing somebody can do is to sell into a panic," said Alexander F. Cabot, an analyst for the Wiley Group, a Conshohocken wealth advisory firm. Thursday's 500-point Dow plunge, followed by Friday's whipsaw ride between positive and negative territory, might induce the risk-averse to head for the exits.

After months of uncertainty about the future of the money-losing Claridge Hotel & Casino, it appeared yesterday that buyers with sufficiently deep pockets and a willingness to risk what's in them will buy the gambling hall. Al Luciani, who as a state assistant attorney general drafted the New Jersey Casino Control Act, said he and four investors have an exclusive agreement, good for the next two weeks, to negotiate for the purchase of the Claridge. Luciani said he is confident a definitive agreement can be negotiated "in a few days.

A Haddon Heights man pleaded guilty in federal court in Camden yesterday to scamming millions from investors who believed his company had a government defense contract to ship military equipment overseas. Instead, prosecutors said, Glyn Richards was operating a classic Ponzi scheme, in which investors were promised quick returns on their money. Richards told people who invested in his Audubon company, All Freight Logistics, that they would receive a 44 percent return within a few months, according to court records.

Real estate investors are increasingly ignoring Groucho Marx's dictum that it's not worth joining any club that would have you as a member. In fact, interest in real estate investing clubs is on the rise, leaders of area groups said last week. The clubs have been around for years, hitting peak popularity in the early to mid-1980s, when disciples of such real estate gurus as Albert Lowry and Robert Allen regularly gathered to worship before the no-money-down altar. But the flock has dwindled over the last two years, as the prophets fell from financial grace amid much bad press, said Richard R. Hamilton, president of the Indiana Real Estate Club and director of properties for Mark O. Haroldsen Inc. of Salt Lake City, which advises clubs all over the country.

Whether wary of making the wrong move or weary of market uncertainty, small investors seemed to sit tight yesterday and wait out what some had feared would be the Black Monday of 1989. It was a shrewd move. History did not repeat itself. Rather than dropping 508 points as it had on Oct. 19, 1987, the Dow Jones industrial average, after taking an early-morning plunge, rose 88.12 points by the time the bell ended trading in the stock market. Retail brokers had feared that a nasty nose dive yesterday and memories of the market's erratic behavior in the year after the 1987 crash would destroy any chance they had of wooing small investors back to the market.

Today, fewer than half of the 60 million employees with long-term investment accounts have held them 10 or more years. Over the next decade, another 30 million will reach that level. Seen in that light, the 2000 election was a mere breaker to a looming tidal wave of investor sentiment.. . . Compared to participants in work-based plans, portfolio owners with individual stocks develop a capitalist ideology rapidly. [The Zogby poll] found that this cohort, after one to five years, is already 43 percent Republican (vs. 34 percent Democrat)

The Vanguard Group closed its high-yield corporate bond fund to most new investors to curtail a flood of money from investors seeking the relatively high returns of its non-investment-grade bonds. In the last six months, investors had poured $2 billion into the fund, bringing its total assets to $16.9 billion, Vanguard said. "In this prolonged low-rate environment, we continue to see investors turn to high-yielding alternatives — including money market fund holders moving to bond funds, U.S. Treasury bond fund holders moving to high-yield corporate funds, and bond fund holders moving to dividend-paying stock funds.

Here's a status update on Facebook's vaunted initial public offering: not as hot as your brother-in-law might have told you. But it remains to be seen whether the Wall Street banks orchestrating the $16 billion stock sale did anything wrong, or whether last week's investors have only themselves to blame if they feel burned. Facebook shares closed Wednesday at $32 apiece, up a dollar for the day but down nearly 16 percent from the $38-a-share initial price set last Thursday. Lawsuits are already alleging that investors were somehow duped by the high-flying social media company or its underwriters, led by Wall Street's Morgan Stanley.

Facebook's share price climbed more than a dollar Thursday, rising above $33, but the sharp drop since last week's high-profile initial public offering continued to cause headaches for the social-networking company, its Wall Street underwriters, and investors. Even brokerages and the NASDAQ stock exchange — blamed for long delays last Friday, the first day the stock was openly traded — are suffering fallout. Facebook and a group of early investors who chose to cash out received more than $16 billion last week from IPO participants who bought shares for the opening $38 price.

InstaMed, a Center City company that sells health-care payments services, said it raised $14 million in capital from investors to expand its network. Since its founding in 2004, InstaMed has raised $35 million, Bill Marvin, the company's co-founder, chairman and chief executive. The company said that 90 percent of previous investors, including Osage Partners in Bala Cynwyd, participated in the latest round. InstaMed's system, developed by its software group in Newport Beach, Calif., combines the eligibility and claims processes of traditional health-care clearing houses with payment processing, Marvin said.

A shareholder in Radian Group Inc. urged the Philadelphia mortgage insurer either to reveal more information about its legacy assets, which are weighing down the company's stock price, or to put itself up for sale. The investor request was made in a letter released Monday by the Clinton Group, which owns 1.87 million Radian shares, or about 1.4 percent of the company, according to Bloomberg News. "We believe Radian has a tremendous franchise and an opportunity to retain its leadership position in the mortgage insurance market for great future profit," George E. Hall, chief executive of Clinton Group, said in the letter.

NEW YORK — Insiders and early Facebook investors are taking advantage of increasing investor demand and selling more of their stock in the company's initial public offering, the company said Wednesday. Facebook said in a regulatory filing that 84 million shares, worth up to $3.2 billion, are being added to what's shaping up to be the decade's hottest IPO. Facebook's stock is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Friday under the ticker symbol "FB. " The entire increase comes from insiders and early investors, so the company won't benefit from the additional sales.

Chesapeake Energy's meltdown has crippled its share price and that of a subsidiary. It's a case study in how risky it can be to invest in one stock. It also shows how energy exchange-traded funds can help blunt the effects of one company's implosion. As is now well-known, Chesapeake Energy's chief executive, Aubrey McClendon, took out more than $1 billion in shrouded personal loans backed by assets of the public company — and investors have demanded he step down as chairman.

Real estate's prolonged troubles, with their attendant bumper crop of foreclosures and reduced levels of home equity, may suggest that sales of vacation properties are nonexistent. The data for 2011 show otherwise, with the biggest share of vacation-home purchases last year made by investors, not folks who planned to own and occupy. Still, said Philadelphia economist Kevin Gillen, a vice president at Econsult Corp. who follows the region's housing market, sales at the Shore continue to track well below average.

AT HIS sentencing Tuesday, a federal prosecutor said that Robert Stinson Jr. had a three-decade long career as a "cunning and deadly" con man. U.S. District Judge Michael M. Baylson sentenced the five-time fraudster to more than 33 years in federal prison. Authorities said that Stinson, 57, bilked at least 263 investors out of more than $14 million in a Ponzi scheme that was shut down by the Securities & Exchange Commission in 2010. Stinson's scheme collapsed in June 2010, when law-enforcement officials raided the local offices of his company, Life's Good Inc., which Stinson started in 2006.

Robert Stinson Jr.'s three-decade career as a "cunning and deadly" con man earned him 33 years in federal prison at his sentencing Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Michael M. Baylson sentenced the five-time fraudster for bilking at least 263 investors out of more than $14 million in a Ponzi scheme that was shut down in 2010 by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Stinson's scheme collapsed in June 2010 when law enforcement officials raided the Philadelphia offices of his company, Life's Good Inc., which Stinson started in 2006.