The Law Offices of Robert Wayne Pearce, P.A. has helped investors recover losses from broker securities fraud for over 45 years.
A nationwide law firm, they represent defrauded investors, stockbrokers, and financial advisors in securities fraud cases, FINRA arbitrations, and regulatory enforcement matters involving the SEC, CFTC, and FINRA.
Founded and led by Robert Wayne Pearce who has over 45 years of experience in investment fraud law, the securities law firm focuses primarily on helping investors recover losses from investment fraud while also defending financial professionals in regulatory actions and employment disputes within the securities industry.
The firm's attorneys handle complex investment disputes including private placement and Regulation D fraud, structured products litigation, and broker-dealer misconduct cases.
The investment and securities fraud lawyers at the Law Offices of Robert Wayne Pearce P.A., represents clients on all sides of securities, commodities and investment fraud and other issues in a broad range of practice areas in courtroom litigation, arbitration, SEC defense, and mediation proceedings.
Attorney Robert Wayne Pearce and his team have handled hundreds of FINRA, AAA and JAMs securities arbitration and mediation cases for satisfied clients located in many U.S. states and throughout the world.
Our investment and securities fraud lawyers have represented investors throughout the United States and internationally. We have recovered over $185 million for our investor clients in all types of stockbroker fraud and broker and advisor misconduct cases.
At The Law Offices of Robert Wayne Pearce, P.A., we believe the ultimate barometer of our success is surpassing the expectation of our clients.
The following clients have direct knowledge of our law firm's processes from the inside and experienced our securities fraud attorneys' fierce advocacy.
The page explains that non-traded real estate investment trusts (REITs) were widely promoted but often involved misrepresentations about returns, liquidity, and risks. At our firm, we’ve seen investors misled by sales solicitations lacking transparency, resulting in unsuitable, complex investment losses. Understanding these risks is essential before investing in any illiquid REIT offering.
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FINRA arbitration can help investors recover losses, but results depend on preparation and strategy. Our attorneys conduct a detailed case review, draft a fact-rich Statement of Claim, and manage arbitrator selection, discovery, mediation, and hearing presentation. We focus on evidence, deadlines, and damages analysis so clients know what to expect from start to award today.
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If you invested in an Inspired Healthcare Capital DST, income fund, or private placement and lost money, you are not alone. Thousands of investors are now facing suspended distributions, frozen capital, and the very real possibility of total loss after Inspired Healthcare Capital (IHC)’s downfall and subsequent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on February 2, 2026.
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Investment Fraud Lawyer | Law Offices of Robert Wayne Pearce, P.A | Securities Law Firm
With a Successful Track Record for Recovery of Investment Losses
Attorney Robert Wayne Pearce is a well-respected advocate for investors throughout the legal community, known as a fierce litigator and tireless not only in Florida but across the nation and near you.
Read his Investors’ Rights Blog and discover the breadth of his knowledge that can only be gained from over 45 years of legal experience for yourself. As one of the most experienced in FINRA arbitration, Mr. Pearce knows all of the available options for your case and will pursue them vigorously to secure the best possible outcome for you and your stockbroker fraud and stockbroker misconduct case.
He has earned a peer rating of AV Preeminent * through the Martindale-Hubbell peer review rating process, the highest available rating through that program.
Mr. Pearce is one of Thomson Reuters Florida Super Lawyers ** for Securities Litigation (Top 5). Read the feature article about him in the Florida 2014 Super Lawyers magazine entitled: “No Excuses – How Robert Wayne Pearce Stared Down Personal Disaster”.
During his more than 45 years of experience practicing securities and commodities law, he has won numerous million-dollar awards and settlements for his clients which has earned him recognition for his success by The Million Dollar Advocates Forum and The Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum as one of the Top Trial Lawyers in America TM***.
By hiring The Law Offices of Robert Wayne Pearce, P.A., you get access to his over 45 years of experience practicing in the area of securities, commodities and investment fraud on both sides of the table in arbitrations and courtroom litigation, and you will clearly see his legal experience and knowledge in action. Having a fierce litigator and tireless advocate of your rights, and one who will quickly identify both the strengths and the weaknesses of your case will surely increase the likelihood of winning your case.
Leveraged ETF decay is the tendency for a leveraged ETF to lose value relative to the simple leveraged return of its underlying index over longer periods, especially when the market is volatile. If a broker recommended a leveraged ETF as a long-term investment, you may have a claim depending on the circumstances. Don’t wait, since FINRA won’t hear most claims filed over six years after the event. In 45 years of representing investors, Robert Wayne Pearce has recovered over $185 million. We charge nothing unless we recover for you. Book a free consultation with our ETF investment loss lawyers. This guide shows how daily resets cause decay, with the flat-market math. It also covers what makes decay worse, whether a fund can go to zero, when a long hold is your broker’s fault, and how to recover. What Is Leveraged ETF Decay? Leveraged ETF decay is the loss a leveraged fund can experience when its index moves up and down, even if the index eventually ends up where it started. You may also see this described as volatility decay or volatility drag. These terms refer to the effect of daily compounding, which can cause a leveraged ETF to lose value in a choppy market. Beta slippage is another related term. However, it’s used more broadly to describe the difference between a leveraged ETF’s actual performance and the return you might expect from simply multiplying the index’s overall return. A leveraged ETF is an exchange-traded fund that uses swaps, futures, and other financial instruments to gain leveraged exposure to an underlying asset or index at a multiple such as 2x or 3x. But that multiple applies to a single day’s return. Over a week or a month, the fund’s result can come in well below three times what the index did. An inverse exchange-traded fund works the same way in reverse (it aims for a negative multiple such as -1x or -3x of the daily move), so it decays too. How Daily Rebalancing Causes Decay Daily rebalancing causes decay because the fund resets its exposure at the end of every trading day, so each day’s gain or loss compounds on a new starting value. FINRA said so directly in Regulatory Notice 09-31: “Most leveraged and inverse ETFs ‘reset’ daily, meaning that they are designed to achieve their stated objectives on a daily basis.” After an up day, a 3x fund holds more assets, so it has to add exposure to keep it at three times. After a down day, it has to cut exposure. In other words, the fund buys after gains and sells after losses, and in a choppy market it keeps doing both. Compounding then does the rest of the damage to your balance. A loss always needs a bigger gain to recover (a 50% drop needs a 100% gain just to get back to even), and leverage makes every loss bigger. So each down day digs a hole the next up day can’t quite fill. That’s why the same notice warned that “due to the effect of compounding, their performance over longer periods of time can differ significantly” from the index they track. You don’t need a falling market to lose money this way. A Leveraged ETF in a Flat Market A leveraged ETF can lose money in a flat market because the index’s round trip doesn’t cancel out once it’s multiplied. Say you put $100 into a 3x fund while its index is at $100, and the index has one good day followed by one bad day. A 10% rise takes the index to $110 and your fund to $130. Then the index drops 9.09% back to $100, while your fund drops three times that, 27.27%, and closes at $94.55, so you’re down 5.45% on an index that went nowhere. We ran the same up-then-back-to-even round trip for a 3x leveraged ETF at four swing sizes, and here’s where a $100 stake ended: You’ll find far worse results in real market history. FINRA’s notice pointed to an ETF built to deliver three times the daily return of the Russell 1000 Financial Services Index, which “fell 53 percent while the index actually gained around 8 percent” between December 1, 2008, and April 30, 2009. What Makes Leveraged ETF Decay Worse How much a leveraged ETF loses to decay depends on volatility, the leverage multiple, how long you hold it, and what the fund costs to run: Volatility Volatility drives decay more than anything else. A common approximation puts the drag at about half of L × (L − 1) × σ² × T, where L is the multiple and σ is the index’s daily volatility. T is the number of trading days you hold. Because the formula squares volatility, bigger swings hurt far more than their size suggests. In our example, the 20% round trip cost the fund nearly four times what the 10% round trip did. But decay isn’t guaranteed, and a steady trend can even work in your favor. If the index rises 3% a day for five straight days, it gains 15.93%, and a 3x fund compounding 9% a day gains 53.86%, which beats three times the index return of 47.8%. You get that bonus only in a smooth trend, and nobody can tell you in advance which kind of market you’re buying into. The Leverage Multiple The multiple raises decay faster than it raises exposure. In the formula, L × (L − 1) comes to 2 for a 2x leveraged ETF and 6 for a 3x fund, so the 3x fund decays about three times as fast in the same market. On the same 10% swing, a 2x fund ends at $98.18, down 1.82%, while the 3x fund is down 5.45%, almost exactly three times as much. Holding Period Decay builds with every trading day you hold. If you buy and sell within one day, you get the stated multiple (before costs), since there’s no reset to compound. GraniteShares (an issuer of leveraged ETFs)...
Learn MoreReverse convertible securities are short-term structured investments that combine a debt instrument with an embedded put option tied to an underlying asset. They usually offer above-market coupon payments, but investors may experience large principal losses if the core assets fall below a specified knock-in barrier. These securities can provide higher income than traditional fixed-income investments, but they also carry significant market, liquidity, credit, and principal loss risks. If you are considering investing in reverse convertible securities or believe you have suffered losses because of investment fraud or broker misconduct, the investment fraud attorneys at Robert Wayne Pearce, P.A. will walk you through how these securities work, the risks involved, warning signs of broker misconduct, and your potential options for recovering investment losses. What Are Reverse Convertible Securities? Reverse convertible securities are high-yield, short-term structured products that pair a debt instrument with an embedded put option linked to a reference asset. They are typically linked to individual stocks, stock indexes, or baskets of equities and are commonly sold in $1,000 denominations. Investors receive a fixed coupon through periodic interest payments until the maturity date, but many reverse convertibles include a knock-in barrier that can allow the issuer to repay principal through the conversion and delivery of depreciated shares rather than cash. Brokers often market reverse convertible notes as income-producing investments because they generally offer coupon rates above those available on conventional bonds and other fixed-income securities. But the higher coupon compensates the investor for accepting substantial downside exposure to the underlying security. For that, they should always evaluate the coupon together with the risk of principal loss instead of treating the interest rate as a standalone benefit. FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-09 warned brokerage firms about the complex risks associated with reverse convertibles and the obligations involved in recommending them to retail investors. The SEC has also brought enforcement actions involving the sale of these products, including an action in which UBS agreed to pay more than $15 million over supervisory and training failures related to reverse convertible notes. How Do Reverse Convertible Securities Work? Reverse convertible securities pay investors a fixed coupon in exchange for exposing their principal to the performance of an underlying stock, index, or other reference asset. Economically, part of the transaction resembles the investor selling a put option to the issuer, which helps explain why the note can offer a higher coupon than an ordinary bond. Many reverse convertibles have a knock-in barrier, which sets a price level that can expose the investor to principal losses. But that only happens if the linked asset falls below the barrier during the specified observation period. Once the barrier is breached and the conversion conditions are met at maturity, the issuer may repay the investor with shares of the linked stock rather than returning the original principal in cash. In effect, an investment that began as a fixed-income security can leave the investor holding an equity position way less than the amount originally invested. The scale of the market also demonstrates why these products have attracted regulatory attention. UBS alone sold approximately $10.7 billion in reverse convertible securities across roughly 44,000 customer accounts during the period addressed by the SEC’s enforcement action. What Are the Risks of Reverse Convertible Securities? The main risks of reverse convertible securities are principal loss risk, market risk, limited upside potential, credit risk, liquidity risk, complexity and valuation risk, call and reinvestment risk, and tax risk. Principal Loss Risk One biggest concern is the possibility of losing part of the principal. The amount returned at maturity may be less than what the investor initially paid, depending on the note’s terms and how the investment is settled. This can leave the investor with a loss even after receiving the scheduled coupon payments. When a barrier is breached and conversion occurs, the investor may receive shares worth considerably less than the original principal. For example, an investor who commits $100,000 to a reverse convertible could receive stock worth substantially less than $100,000 at maturity if the underlying shares have fallen sharply. Market Risk Market risk arises from changes in the value of the stock, index, or other asset linked to the reverse convertible. A huge decline in that reference asset can trigger conversion and expose the investor to principal losses even when the broader financial markets remain relatively stable. This risk may be greater when the reverse convertible is based on a single stock. Earnings disappointments, regulatory issues, product failures, management problems, and other company-specific events can send the stock price lower and potentially push it below the note’s barrier. Limited Upside Potential Reverse convertibles generally limit an investor’s upside to the coupon payments specified by the note. If the underlying stock increases substantially in value, the investor ordinarily does not participate in that capital appreciation in the same manner as a shareholder. For example, if the linked stock rises by 30%, the reverse convertible investor may still receive only the predetermined coupon and repayment provided under the note’s terms. The investor has accepted exposure to the stock’s downside without receiving equivalent participation in its upside. Credit Risk Reverse convertible securities are generally unsecured obligations of the issuing bank or financial institution. Investors therefore face credit risk in addition to the market risk associated with the underlying security. If the issuer becomes unable to meet its obligations, an investor could lose principal and expected coupon payments regardless of how the underlying stock performs. The financial crisis demonstrated that the credit quality of major financial institutions can deteriorate rapidly during periods of severe market stress. Liquidity Risk Selling the investment before maturity may be difficult because there may be little or no active secondary market for a particular note. An investor who needs access to their money before maturity may have trouble finding a buyer at a reasonable price. Even where an issuer or broker-dealer is willing to repurchase the security, the offered price may be substantially below its theoretical value or the investor’s original purchase price. Market...
Learn MoreCredit Default Swaps—once the exclusive domain of Wall Street trading desks—now reach everyday investors through structured notes, ETFs, and mutual funds, often without their knowledge. These complex instruments embed CDS risk inside products marketed as “enhanced yield” or “principal protected” investments, exposing retirement accounts and conservative portfolios to catastrophic losses. Since the 2008 financial crisis, CDS-linked products have generated hundreds of billions in investor losses, triggered landmark enforcement actions, and remain a persistent source of FINRA arbitration claims.
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