I have been pleasantly surprised on a number of fronts. |
If I had to make a choice between no advice and biased advice, I'd choose biased advice because I think there is a desperate need for it. |
If you look at the infraction records, oftentimes it's the same firms that are getting caught, a sign that the executives are condoning bad behavior. The tone is set from the top, and it doesn't cost anything to change that. |
It's unfortunate, to say the least, that one of the best-run mutual fund companies in the country is pricing itself out of the market for middle-income investors. |
Ninety-nine percent of the time when a person gets advice they assume that the person is acting in their best interest. |
Some will give good advice, but a lot will give bad advice. |
The average person usually can't distinguish between them. |
The for-profit environment adds to the pressures and potential conflicts of interests, |
The proper approach is to have a long-term strategy that has a balance of different types of investments in the portfolio, so that it's built in that it deals with changing market conditions. |
The research is that the more you fiddle with your portfolio the worse you do. Investors rarely benefit from fiddling with their portfolio. My only advice to people that tweak their portfolios is to stop. |
The SEC doesn't have the resources to do its job. In 1980 the SEC reviewed all corporate financial statements every year. In 2000, they reviewed about 15 percent. Enron's statements hadn't been reviewed since 1997. |
The titles they use mean absolutely nothing. We have a marketplace for financial advice in which professionals use virtually identical titles. ... You have to dig deeper. |
There is a big difference between making this work for smaller companies and eliminating the requirements altogether. They were supposed to come up with suggestions on how to make this work. |
There's no question there has been enormous pressure from the Bush administration to think small. This increase is what Harvey Pitt asked for with his arm twisted halfway up his back. |
Ultimately you can't get around the fact that forty percent of states are not inspecting advisors at all?and only thirty-six percent are inspecting them enough to form an effective deterrent. |