Wall Street never gives, rarely shares, always takes. You will discover this under difficult conditions.
Wall Street marketing is designed to make you believe that with a bit of their quick advice you can secure your financial future. This allows them to maintain their business model and distance themselves as an “agent”, using their own definition of “suitability” and their own low standards established for risk disclosures. This way, you cannot hold them responsible when you lose money and then you find that their account agreement takes away your normal civil rights. In tandem, they take some of the money they get from the fees and commissions you pay to hire lobbyists to keep the government from developing more effective regulation that would better protect you. This has been going on for years. They falsely call themselves consultants and advisors. Pharmaceutical sales people are not allowed to call themselves doctors, are they? Most recently, the lobby was able to defeat the Department of Labor Fiduciary Rule.
Wall Street pressures the government to protect and help the wealthy and powerful from their own financial mistakes. This happened with Long Term Capital Management. It happened with the bail out of the financial firms during the Great Recession, which those firms created. It happens thru the tax laws. No such effort is made for the average middle class investor.
Don’t depend on the ever present financial media for help either. They are part of the Wall Street machine. Promotional hype, misinformation and the lack of risk information are the norm. Be Careful!
So unless you are very sophisticated, you are at high risk if you are not in business with an advisor who functions as a “fiduciary”. Although even that may not be enough, it is far better than the alternatives offered by Wall Street.
For more information:
INVESTMENT DILEMMA, by Joseph Testa
www.reasonatrisk.com “Investment Success”