Sunday, August 02, 2009

Make Wall Street Put Investors Best Interest First

We don’t usually go in for petitions, but we feel that this one is worth signing…and worth it for others, too.

At stake is whether investors will continue to be serviced by brokers who use a “suitability” standard, or Advisors, who are required by law to put their clients’ interest first.

There is a long list of abuses by FINRA supervised brokers, who can easily be tempted by certain products that pay a bigger commission, stocks or bonds which are recommended by a sales manager (‘Let’s put some lipstick on this pig”), trips to exotic places, account churning, and more. And, of course, there are a great many brokers who rise above this and provide exemplary advice/service by adopting a fiduciary standard even if they don’t have to.

But shouldn’t everyone do that? What kind of finacial system has two sets of rules like this?

In case you haven’t guessed, we are in favor of a Fiduciary Standard: the clients’ interest always come first. Period.

To see the petition and view a more in depth discussion of this subject, please go to:  http://tinyurl.com/nsr97g

And thanks to our friends at fi360, the Center for Fiduciary Studies, for being pro-active on this matter