U.S. Money Managers Turn Cautious
Money managers have reined in their optimism since the fall, but they see bargains in Europe, energy, tech.
April 25, 2015
Buyer Beware: Your Broker is a F*@#ing Crook!
Now that I have your attention, I have no idea if your broker is a crook or not. But if you do one thing today, go to BrokerCheck to perform a background check on your financial advisor. Hopefully yours has a clean record and not several red flags against them.
In baseball, you get three strikes and you are out. In other professions, it may only take one or two strikes to get tossed. But at the self-regulatory organization FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, that oversees the brokerage industry, it could take 69! The New York Times just wrote a lengthy article about a stockbroker who received 69 customer complaints over 13 years before finally being barred from the business in 2014.
The invisible hand of central bankers and government intervention
The financial markets are guided by supply and demand conditions for stocks and bonds. Historically, their fluctuations have been heavily influenced by business conditions and economic cycles. During the past 12-15 months something new and different has dominated the marketplace. Unorthodox governmental forces are the engine that drives the financial markets which seem totally insensitive to any negative economic developments.