Zachary Dristol

Anybody who follows financial news is aware of what happened to American International Group during the financial crisis. It has taken a couple years for the crippled insurance giant to claw its way back out of bankruptcy, but now the company is offering to buy back some of the sub-prime mortgages that the Federal...
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Not long ago, MetLife joined forces with Fidelity Investments and let the world know that they would be releasing a new variable annuity product. The new product would be known as the MetLife Growth and Guaranteed Income product. During the first twelve months of the product’s lifecycle, the annuity earned MetLife a total of...
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With the continued strong performance of the stock market despite weak job and housing markets, mutual fund companies saw another of capital inflows into their funds. Last week, $8.9 billion in assets flowed into Wall Street, hoping to benefit from an increase in corporate profits. However, it wasn’t just stock funds that benefited from...
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Ever since the company was first established over 170 years ago one of the leaders in the banking, investments, and financial services industries has been JP Morgan Chase & Co.  However, similar to many other banks and investment firms, JP Morgan had to deal with the declining economy in 2007 through 2010 and saw...
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For nearly 150 years the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company has been an industry leader in the financial services and insurance industries.  The company, which is commonly referred to as MetLife, is based out of New York, NY but has operations throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and several other areas of...
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Edible oil prices have been falling on the wholesale oils and oilseed market because of lower demand in Asia and Malaysia. This trend has led to selling by speculators on the futures market causing May-delivery contracts to plunge over 2.5%. Palm Oil has fallen to the lowest prices in three months on speculation that...
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Financial rating service Morningstar has announced that it will maintain its BBB- credit rating for the Hartford Financial Services Group. The firm has managed to raise enough funds from the market in order to pay off all of its debt to the government for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Despite this, Morningstar still feels...
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The investment banking and securities firm Goldman Sachs has reinstated its coverage of Prudential Financial, Inc., and added Prudential’s stock to its exclusive “Conviction Buy” category of potential investments. Including a stock on the “Conviction Buy” list is considered one of the highest honors in the realm of publicly traded securities rating. Goldman reserves...
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Fitch Ratings recently affirmed the Issuer Default Rating (IDR) of American Equity Investment Life Holding Company at a rating level of BB plus. At the same time Fitch affirmed the Insurer Financial Strength (IFS) of the company’s subsidiaries American Equity Investment Life Insurance Company and American Equity Investment Life Insurance Company of New York,...
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The 8.8 earthquake, and the ensuing tsunami, drove gold prices lower early Friday morning. Gold prices have been hovering near all time highs in the past few weeks, with many investors searching for a safe haven. It’s unclear what lasting effect the quake will have on gold and silver, although prices had rallied by...
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