A company calling itself Global Market Trend claims to provide “Swiss Government Backed Fixed Income Bonds” paying “5-10% per annum”.
Who are Global Market Trend?
A testimonial on GMT’s website claims “I have been an investor with GMT since 2010”. In marketing emails, it claims to have been founded in 1992.
In reality Global Market Trend’s website domain, gmt-synvestment.com, was only registered in December 2018.
GMT provides no corporate identifying number or any other corporate identity on its website. In the absence of a corporate identity, there is no proof whatsoever that it existed prior to December 2018.
Despite offering financial services including dealing in securities, and promoting its investments directly to UK investors, GMT provides no evidence that it is authorised by a financial regulator anywhere in the world.
This means that even if the investments it offered existed, GMT would be operating illegally in the UK and any other country it promoted investments or securities without registering with the local regulator.
Global Market Trend claims to be fronted by Adil Javaid Khan who heads up one of the most hilariously motley crews of fashion models I have seen.
Given GMT’s blatant lies about its longevity, and its outlandish claims to have £4.4 billion under management despite having no corporate identity and no regulatory authorisation, it is more than possible that Khan does not exist and the models pictured are blameless.
Parts of GMT’s website are copied and pasted from Investopedia without attribution.
How safe is the investment?
Despite offering financial services including dealing in securities, and promoting its investments directly to UK investors, GMT provides no evidence that it is authorised by a financial regulator anywhere in the world.
This means that even if the investments it offered existed, GMT would be operating illegally in the UK and any other country it promoted investments or securities without registering with the local regulator.
GMT claims to offer a “a safe 5% – 10% per annum” from a bond backed by the Swiss Government.
At time of writing bonds issued by the Swiss Government yield minus 0.5% (i.e. the Swiss Government is considered so safe that you have to pay the Swiss Government to have them look after your money).
Further specifics of the “Swiss backed bonds” are not provided by GMT in their emails, but the interest rate alone makes it is abundantly clear that the bonds it offers are far from safe, and the above inconsistencies and GMT’s willingness to break securities law indicate that nothing they say about their “bonds” is credible.
Should I invest with Global Market Trends?
This blog does not give financial advice. The following are statements of publicly available facts or widely accepted investment principles, not a personalised recommendation. Investors should consult a regulated independent financial adviser if they are in any doubt.
Any investment offering yields of up to 10% should be considered high risk.
Before investing investors should ask themselves:
- How would I feel if the investment defaulted and I lost 100% of my money?
- Is my portfolio big enough that I could lose 100% of my investment and not worry about it?
Most importantly, investors should think long and hard before handing their money to a firm that declares no registered corporate identity or regulatory authorisation, claims implausibly high investment returns for “safe” investment, and lies about how long the firm has been in business.
Do not invest unless you are prepared to lose all your money.
Fraud Alert!
In an example of lampshade hanging, GM Trend’s website includes a “Fraud Alert” page which says “GM Trend is aware of the existence of certain entities or persons that are conducting such financial scams using GMT name [sic] or the identity of GMT & Associates.”
When they say they are aware of certain people, what they mean is that they made them up.
GM Trend lists a series of website domains which it claims have been used by copycat scams, such as “gmtrendfinancecapitalae.com; and “gmt-synvestmentfinancecapitalsae.com”. In reality, Whois records show that nobody has ever registered a domain at these addresses.
Much as GM Trend might want to imagine that they’re so famous that bottom-feeders would clone their website, the reality is that the only bottom-feeders here are GM Trend.
It appears that all the photos on their About Us page have been photoshopped onto identical backgrounds, possibly to ensure that you can’t do a reverse image search to find out the true origin of the images.
Be afraid of these people. Be very afraid.
Has anyone else been contacted by Financial Logistics Solutions Insolvency Ltd based in Cheshire about recovering investors money from Averren Energy bonds sold by GMT synvestment, following a court order to wind it up?. Investors are advised to pay 10% fee before money will be released. I presume this is a scam built on the original boiler room scam to sell a non existent investment. Good money after bad?
You presume correctly.
Liquidators take their fees from any funds recovered before creditors are paid, they do not charge creditors directly.