Blinded by Wall Street

A so called "Vice President of Investments" recently responded to an article online trying to state his position as a Wall Street Broker and how he was just as "fiduciary like" as Independent Registered Investment Advisers. What a bunch of baloney! He claimed his advice was suitable and he looked out for his customers. What a joke! Do you realize that most all Wall Street Brokers are Vice Presidents of Investments? This title in and of itself is totally misleading.

Fiduciary like? There is no such thing as "fiduciary like." This shows how blind these Wall Street Brokers are when it comes to doing the right thing. They have actually convinced themselves that selling products from the inventory of their Wall Street brokerage firm is perfectly okay. They have also convinced themselves that selling a client a Variable Annuity in a IRA account that pays them 6 to 8% commission and locks the client in for 10 years or more is perfectly okay. That is instead of opening a regular brokerage IRA account without a 10 year or more penalty for early withdrawal. Further, they convince themselves that it is okay to sell mutual funds that charge a 5.75% sales load, when no load funds are available to them to offer to clients.

A read an article online recently that said over 90% of the Registered Investment Advisers out there today are also affiliated with a Wall Street firm, a Bank or an Insurance Company. This means that there is only 10% of us true fiduciaries out there. So, look out. Nine out of ten people out there today giving financial advice is doing so in their firm's best interest, not yours.

In my humble opinion, the battle the fiduciary standard is going to end with Wall Street brokerage firms, Bank and Insurance Company clients getting the shaft. There is already talk on the street of how the fiduciary standard is going to be watered down to allow the same Wall Street revenue generating brokerage machine to continue. Banks and Insurance Companies will continue business as usual. People will continue to be given financial advice that favors:

1. The Wall Street firm first, or the Bank or Insurance Company first.
2. The Wall Street Broker, or excuse me...I meant Vice President of Investments.
3. I interrupt this list for an important message. I just realized that if you get your advice from a Wall Street firm that is owned by a bank and you are sold a Variable Annuity, then the Wall Street firm, the Bank and the Insurance Company all benefit before you. Yikes!!
4. Last on the list unfortunately is you.

It astounds me that anyone would ever obtain their investment advice from either a Wall Street firm, a Bank or an Insurance Company when the cards are stacked against them from the get go. Do you get your financial advice from a Wall Street firm, a Bank or an Insurance Company? Why? They do not care about you and they are not on your side. More importantly, they do not do what is in your best interests.

The good news is that there is a better option. Independent Registered Investment Advisers who have no affiliation with a Wall Street firm, a Bank or an Insurance Company. Sadly, we do not have millions of dollars that we take from clients and pay to Congress in order to get our way. We simply just keep plodding along hoping that one day, the people of America will wake up and realize that doing business with an Independent Registered Investment Adviser is the only place to obtain your financial advice.

Keep Your Assets. Take My Advice. Seriously.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Year. God Bless.

Brainwashed Thinking

I was at a meeting recently and I had some conversations with some insurance agents, some bank representatives and registered representatives. This was just idle chit chat about what I do and what they do. I was very surprised how brainwashed these people are by their affiliations. They have no clue what it means to be a fiduciary and deliver advice in a client's best interest.

The SEC is currently evaluating how to apply a fiduciary standard to these type of professionals. I can tell you, the SEC is facing an uphill battle.

One of the people I spoke with in my idle chit chat was an insurance agent. I told this person that I recently had a seminar with planning ideas to help seniors qualify for Medicaid Planning and Veterans Benefits. This person's first question was ..."what products do you sell to them?" Those of you who have read my book, or seen my latest brochure will know that insurance agents are compensated by product sales. Unfortunately, this is all they know. They know that they get paid by product sales. When someone asks..."what product do you sell to them?", then that tells me what they focus on with their clients. They focus on themselves. This of course, is contrary to a fiduciary standard of care.

My answer to to this person was that I did not sell products to them, but rather I did what was in their best interest and only charged a fee for my services. This person persisted with...'but, you have to be selling some products. What products are you selling?" I was really taken aback about how the blinders over this person's eyes are affecting their objectivity. I may be reaching a little bit here, but the concept of charging a fee and doing something in the best interest of a client seemed to be so far removed from this person's thinking that it was not even a remote possibility.

Quite frankly, I was astonished. Sadly, most of the people in my business work at banks, insurance companies or Wall Street firms. They have all the marketing dollars and political power. They are so brainwashed into the product sales mentality that they cannot even imagine what it takes to do something in a client's best interest. Like I mentioned earlier, the SEC is facing an uphill battle.

Another person that I chatted with wanted to know if I was in the Financial Planning Association. The FPA is made up of CFP's and other professionals who are mostly people who work at banks, insurance companies and Wall Street firms. Take a guess how excited I would be to run around with a bunch of people like these folks.

This person saw my CFP lapel pin and said that I should join. I then said, "Why?" He said, "because you are a CFP and the FPA is for CFP's." I said to this person, "you are going to have to do better than that." The attorney standing next to me laughed when I said that. This person, who was a bank representative by the way, went on to try and convince me of the wonderful educational opportunities and continuing education available. As a courtesy, I gave this person my business card, but I have to admit that I am kind of like Groucho Marx in this area. I will not join any organization that wants me to join. The truth is the FPA is in decline and they are losing a lot of members each year. Every time I run into one of these people, they are trying to convince me to join the FPA. If it truly was a good organization, then no one would have to recruit for it. This tells me that it is a lobbyist organization with a bunch of fat cat salaried people trying to justify their existence. I will not be giving them any of my money.

The last thing I want to do is go to a meeting where insurance company home office people are telling me how great their products and commissions are for insurance agents.

I am very comfy in my own little world of the fiduciary standard and doing what is in the best interests of my clients, thank you very much.

Later my friends.

Obama' Speech Contradicts Thinking on Financial Regulation

I watched President Obama's speech intently last night, as did a lot of Americans. We were all hoping for good news on the plugging of the oil leak five thousand feet down. Let's face the facts. As long as that leak continues, no one is going to be happy.

My take on the speech was a little different than most would imagine. It is not a political ideology that I write about here, but rather a correlation that I noticed in his speech. I found it rather ironic when he was talking about how the oil industry has been allowed to police themselves and this was a bad thing, it sounded just like the way the financial markets are regulated. Here are his Oval Office remarks from last night where he is talking about the Minerals Management Service:

"Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility -- a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves. At this agency, industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight. Oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations."

Did he just admit that an agency of the Federal Government was a complete and abject failure? Yet he wants bigger government. Sorry, I digressed.

While he was reading his speech, I was thinking to myself...this sounds a lot like FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. FINRA is a for profit company by the way. FINRA was in charge of regulating Bernie Madoff and countless other fraudsters. FINRA is a self regulatory organization which as the President says about the Mineral Management Service, "industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight." This is exactly how our unscrupulous financial advisors are regulated. The people tied to the industry are involved in FINRA. They are without a doubt industry insiders. How is that working for us? Why isn't the President demanding change in the Financial Industry with regard to self regulation like he is in regard to "Big Oil"?

I am not one to normally look to other countries for answers, but I found it curious that the "Brits" have eliminated all forms of commissions from investment products. This causes all the financial firms to guess what, do what is in the best interests of the clients. What are we doing these days? Beating up on BP. Maybe we ought to step back a take a look at what they are saying not only with regard to BP, but also with the elimination of commissions for selling financial products.

These Wall Street guys are fighting this with every thing that they have, which is mostly money they obtained from their clients. For now, it appears that clients are going to end up on the losing end.

Today, as I write this, I received an email from Investment News. Here are some of the headlines:

Thirty-year scam financed adviser's 'sordid' secret life

Ex-Ameriprise adviser gets five years for fraud; ordered to repay B-D $2.7M

Falling Starr: A timeline of a celebrity financial adviser's alleged fraud

This is just in one day! Most of America has no idea how many of these scams are going on right now. These fraudsters are like cockroaches. They are everywhere!

Ponder this thought if you will. Does it really make sense for there to be a self regulatory (for profit company) in charge of regulation over the majority of "financial advisors"? (Series 6 or 7 registered representatives) Forgive me, but it does not appear to be working very well.

The for profit thing is kind of curious too. Whenever FINRA needs to make money, all they have to do is find one of their members to slap with a big fine. This seems kind of goofy to me that they would be a for profit company as a self regulatory organization.

Congress is hammering out the details of Financial Reform legislation over the next couple of weeks. If FINRA really wanted to, they could influence the legislators with their demand for the Fiduciary Standard. Executives at FINRA have publicly stated that they are in favor of a fiduciary duty to clients. Back door, cigar filled rooms tell a different story. It is no surprise to me that the Fiduciary Standard is absent from the upcoming legislation.

FINRA regulated Brokerage Firms do not want this Fiduciary Standard at all. The sad truth is that Wall Street will be able to continue business as usual using a Suitability Standard instead of a Fiduciary Standard. In a nutshell, this means that they can continue to do what is best for their firm first, before doing what is best for their clients. The end result will be the continued sale of high commission, high revenue generating products with poor liquidity features that are absolutely awful for everyday investors. Until we eliminate the scourge of commissions from our landscape, then investors will be taken to the cleaners over and over again.

Investors can do something about it however. Only do business with Independent Registered Investment Advisers. This means only do business with people who do not have a Series 6 or Series 7 license.

The Johnson Amendment

No. Not this Johnson. Senator Tim Johnson, a Republican from South Dakota who has put forth an amendment to peform a study on the Fiduciary Duty. An 18 month study no less.

Didn't the SEC already do a study on the fiduciary issue called the Rand Report? As a matter of fact they did in 2008. A lot of good it did as we all know by now.

Once again, the consumers of America are getting pushed aside due to political posturing on both sides of the isle. Get this people. Wall Street has all the money to pay for lobbyists and consumers do not. Therefore, it would take "an act of Congress" to change the status quo in Washington, D.C. right now. I am not holding my breath. They are not going to pass any meaningful legislation around fiduciary duty protections for consumers. As I stated in a prior post, as long as you have revenue quota requirements from Wall Street firms, you can never have a fiduciary duty for consumers. It is simply impossible. There is no way you can argue the point otherwise.

If you are a consumer, then do not expect much to happen in your favor. Unless of course you do business with a financial advisor who really does things in your best interests and has no relationship whatsoever with a Wall Street or FINRA firm. These fine folks are called Registered Investment Advisers.

Why Broker/Dealers Can Never Be Fiduciaries

I suppose with this new law being worked on by the House Financial Services Committee that this will open the flood gates for financial advisers who want to do want is in the best interest of the client. In my prior post, I show the one quote that will kill it for consumers.

Let us assume that I want to go to work for a major broker/dealer. I would name one but who knows what they are calling themselves these days. I cannot keep up with all the name changes and mergers. Back to my premise of wanting to go to work for one of these firms. (Why, I do not know.) I read the Investor Protection Act of 2009 and notice that I can finally do what is in the best interest of the client. So, when that mean old branch manager tells me that I have to produce $300,000 in gross revenue in order to keep my job, all that I have to do is remind him that that is not in the best interest of my clients. The branch manager will not be able to touch me. I can keep my job even if I only produce $30,000 in revenue. After all, a production quota is in the best interest of the firm, not the client. Therefore, Mr. Branch Manger, you can take that production requirement and stick it.

Now, do you really believe that broker/dealers are going to dispense with revenue production requirements? Neither do I.

You cannot have revenue production requirements and do what is in the best interest of the client. Period.

This is why the Investor Protection Act of 2009 is a bunch of bunk and all a show. I can see loophole after loophole in it. The stupid bill conflicts itself, saying one thing and contradicting it later. Obviously, they have not read this bill either.

The broker/dealers have won, yet again. Proof positive that Congress does whatever Wall Street wants them to do. After all, that is where the money is.

I say vote them all out. Let's get someone in Washington who can read!

Broker Dealers win the Lobbying War - Consumers Lose

The House Bill known as the Investor Protection Act of 2009 has been watered down as feared. The Broker/Dealers and Wall Street with all their lobbying money have won the war.

Here is a portion of the bill:


"The receipt of compensation based on commission shall not, in and of itself, be considered a violation of such standard applied to a broker or dealer."

So, what they are saying is that as long as you charge 5.75% commission to your client and you tell them, then as an adviser, you have nothing to worry about. You will have complied with the law. The fact that you are selling them some piece of crap investment does not matter.

Sorry consumers. You lose again to Wall Street.

A Blast From the Past

About 4 and 1/2 years ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission put out a request for comments on whether to allow broker/dealers an exemption from being registered as a registered investment adviser. Back then, the SEC ruled that broker/dealers were exempt. This has obviously turned out to be a huge mistake as the events of the last year will attest. I thought it would be interesting for my readers to go back and see my position as I wrote it. Seems like I knew what was in store for the future. My response from February 3, 2005 is in blue type. I will add some final comments at the end of this blog article.

Subject: File No. S7-25-99
From: Richard A Johnson, CFP, CMFC, RFC
Affiliation: Rick Johnson Family Office, LLC

February 3, 2005

Although there are many issues to discuss with this proposed rule, I shall limit my comments to a few key points.

1 The use of titles by broker/dealer registered representatives: Financial Advisor, Financial Consultant, Investment Consultant and other similar terms are a major source of confusion for investors. I believe that any individual holding themselves out as a financial planner, financial consultant, financial advisor, investment consultant or other similar term should have to register under the Advisors Act of 1940. This is regardless of whether or not they have discretion over an account or not.

Further, registered representatives of broker/dealers should only be able to use terms that include the word representative in its description. For example, financial representative, or investment representative. In addition, senior broker/dealer representatives could have a title similar to these senior financial representative, senior investment representative, or financial representative II. The point is that registered representatives should have at least the word representative on their business card, if they want to rely on the exemption for registration under the Advisors Act. Those who desire to put financial planner, financial advisor, financial consultant or similar term should have to register under the Advisors Act.

2 The commission is mistaken if it believes that fee based investment advice is one of the best ways of delivering value to an investor. I see a scenario where broker/dealers will be given a green light to put every client that they can into a fee based brokerage account. This truly benefits the broker/dealer in stabilizing their revenue stream. But what about the client? Is the Commission naive enough to believe that broker/dealer clients who were neglected in the past because they had already been sold B shares, CDSC annuities and the like will suddenly be taken better care of by being in a fee based account? Specifically, I am referring to a clients second and third year of being in a fee based account. If a client has given the broker/dealer all their money, then how much attention do you truly believe they will be getting in years two, three and beyond? If history lends us a clue, we only have to look at how these same clients were treated when they had already been sold every possible commissionable investment. They were put aside for new clients of the firm. The same thing will happen if you allow a green light to the broker/dealers to sell fee based accounts without being registered as investment advisors.

Financial Planners/Registered Investment Advisors have a fiduciary responsibility to not only give the initial advice, but also to continuously give advice. Broker/Dealer representatives would not have the same standard.

3 Further, what value does the client receive from a broker/dealer sold fee based account when the client is not trading very often. Wouldn't they be better off in a commission account over the longer term? However, again I believe the Commission would be naive to believe that broker/dealers are not going to pressure their sales force to constantly add fee paying clients to its roster. It is the firms interest which will override the clients interest.

As a former branch manager of a major broker/dealer, I can tell you that I had significant pressure to put clients into fee based accounts. Sadly, with my knowledge as a CFP, I knew full well that clients were not going to be taken care of properly over the long haul in these accounts, because the broker/dealer was not interested in taking care of clients. They were interested in taking care of their own revenue.

You tell me if this is a conflict of interest or not. As a branch manager, I had a 67,000,000 target in my last quarter, yes that's right, I said quarter. If I brought in a million dollar account, then I was credited with 1,000,000 to my asset target of 67,000,000. However, if I took that same 1,000,000 account and put them in a fee based account, then I was credited with an additional 1,250,000 in asset credit towards my target. Now where do you think my focus was as a manager? To make sure clients were getting great financial advice, or to make sure that I reached my asset target? I was crazy not to take advantage of putting everyone that I could into fee based accounts, when I received 225 percent towards my asset target. Wouldn't you agree? Again, where is the client in all this? Neglected that is where.

Broker/Dealers should register under the Advisors Act to insure that clients receive not only initial advice, but ongoing advice held to a fiduciary standard.

Thank you.

Proof once again that I know my stuff. It sure is telling now that there is a call for a fiduciary standard for broker/dealers and their registered representatives.

The broker/dealers won their lobbying efforts back then, and I fully expect them to win their lobbying efforts again. In other words, the fiduciary standard will have loopholes in favor of the broker/dealers that they will be able to drive their Mack Trucks through. They have all the political clout in Washington D.C. Clients unfortunately do not stand a chance. Wait and see.

Thanks.

A Fiduciary Standard Watered Down

There is no doubt that the fiduciary standard for anyone who renders investment advice would be a good thing. However, in the Obama Administration's White Paper, on page 72 to be exact, there is a statement that concerns me greatly. It reads:

prohibiting certain conflicts of interests and sales practices that are contrary to the interests of investors.

You can read it here: http://www.financialstability.gov/docs/regs/FinalReport_web.pdf

What bothers me is the word "certain" in that statement. My interpretation, based on my experience, would mean that selling from broker/dealer inventory would be one of the conflicts of interest that they are referring to. Broker dealers currently are allowed to buy stocks of various companies and keep them in inventory. They typically buy companies that are widely held. When their customers want to buy that same stock, then the broker/dealers sell them the stock from their inventory. The broker/dealer may have bought the stock at a lower price and sold it from inventory to the client at a higher price. If they do not have the stock at a lower price, then they let the customer buy it outside of their inventory. The do not normally sell their inventory positions at a loss. It is easier for them to let the client buy it from the exchanges. Obviously, they stand to make more money by selling from inventory.

I believe that broker/dealers would gladly give up selling from inventory for the ability to be a fiduciary under the forthcoming watered down rules. What we will see, in regard to the fiduciary standard, is that broker/dealers and their FINRA registered representatives will be able to continue doing business as usual. They will only have to disclose their conflicts of interest, then they can continue selling commission based products instead of fee only investment advice in a client's best interest.

The tactic being pushed to the media from Mary Shapiro, SEC Chairman is that broker/dealers and investment adviser's services are "substantially identical" as far as the public is concerned.

See this article from Financial Planning's web site for comments from Mary Shapiro:
http://www.financial-planning.com/news/schapiro-fiduciary-standard-sec-2662329-1.html?ET=financialplanning:e447:1882177a:&st=email

This could not be further from the truth. Besides, the fact that the consumer is not able to distinguish between a FINRA registered representative and an investment adviser is because of the "solely incidential" rule. The solely incidental rule, sometimes called the "Merrill Lynch" rule is the rule that opened the flood gates allowing FINRA registered representatives the ability to wear two hats. When they want to sell products, they slide the brokerage agreement in front of the client, all the while neglecting to mention any conflicts of interest. By wearing the FINRA hat, they do not have to disclose conflicts of interest. They can also wear the hat of an investment adviser. This is why they are known as dually registered (wearing the more profitable FINRA hat at the time of the transaction, of course.)

You rarely see a dually registered FINRA sales person as a 100% fee only investment adviser. They have to hit their sales quotas to keep their offices. Most FINRA broker/dealers have as their sales quotas upwards of $250,000 in revenue per year and higher. If you do the math, then you will see that in order to produce $250,000 in revenue as a 100% fee only advisor for the FINRA broker/dealer, then this means that this FINRA registered representative would have to bring in net new assets each and every year of $16,666,666.67. This is using 1.5% as the annual fee for the calculation. ($16,666,666.67 x 1.5% = $250,000.) Let me assure you, very few FINRA registered representatives can do this each and every year. I can promise you that FINRA broker/dealers are not going to lower their yearly sales quotas.

As a result, my educated guess is that we will see a watered down fiduciary standard that allows FINRA registered representatives to still wear two hats and still "pretend" to do things in a client's best interest. It will be even worse if FINRA itself is allowed to be the regulator of registered investment advisers. That would be the nail in the coffin for consumers of financial services. Wasn't the goal here to protect consumers?

You can read more about it in my book, Keep Your Assets. Take My Advice.