Re: "be Wary Of 100% Capital Guarantee Inducements
You can't have it every which way. You mention that you should be 'expecting to get a cash return plus a little bit'. Unfortunately you can't get that without risking something. You either stick your money into a deposit account and be happy with low interest returns, or you risk some of it and end up with higher or lower than that. In your case, you risked some of it and, as it happened, you got lower than cash returns. No doubt in other periods, people got higher than cash returns.
The reality is you can't have a capital guarantee AND the prospect of excellent returns. I think it's misleading to suggest that the prospect of 'decent upside' is in the lotto odds territory, but perhaps the point is if you do want 'decent upside' then you are going to have to take on a bigger risk than you did. What you traded off was the prospect of slightly better than cash returns against the safety of a deposit return. However as you didn't want to risk any of your original capital, then you were never going to get any very significant returns. I think the problem with some of the capital guarantee products is that sometimes people think they are the holy grail - prospect of great returns, but no risk to your capital. That just is not possible. It may also be that sellers are promising far too much from the product. That might seem to have been the case here. I would be concerned that you ever thought you 'might hit the jackpot' from this product. The lotto is the product for that.