When money moves...

Hence, going independent or RIA can be profitable. Many of the ads are about changing firms ... it ends up with us discussing right or wrong about taking house accounts ... who created and who creates this situation? The industry itself , continuously changing the venues from load, to deferred load, to wrap, and now apparently a focus on planning fees. Client usually pays the same, but our professional apples are continuously shaken off the tree. The professional (her)self suffers, and we continuously take the bait. No one is immune - let's watch the economics of RIA regulation over the next few years.

You must mean a figurative union, not a real, potentiallly corrupt union. Why would I mean that?

The firm is never going to give the broker a fair shake when they don't have to. The only recourse the broker has is to leave the firm. If he leaves, he has three choices, Leave the business, Independent, or go to another firm (as if things will be different there). If the brokers had a collective bargaining unit, they would have a different leverage with the firms. 69 guys wouldn't have felt compelled to leave Smith Barney that Friday if Smith Barney's management knew that they couldn't keep going to the "charge the FC's" well to pay for their depredations. But who was there there to speak for the brokers? Nobody!

Many firms have signed on to this "Protocol" for leaving brokers wherein a leaving broker follows this protocol and the ex-firm will not go after the broker with a TRO. But if you look at the "Protocol" it does absolutely NOTHING to help the broker, it only serves the firms involved (in that it's like having "No-Fault Auto Insurance"). What broker group had any input into this process? Who was it that watched out for our best interests? NOBODY!

Like Indy says, if you take good care of clients, they're yours.

That's crap and we all know it. Clients, taken care of or not, are still susceptible to salesmanship. Meanwhile, clients that have been taken care of should have gotten away from the "salesmanship" relationship with their broker. As such their resistance to the BS of a broker with the weight of the BOM (waving free accounts, lower margin costs, deep discounted trades for the first six month and other tchatchkas that the BOM would never have allowed the original broker to offer) behind him is lowered.

I'm able to hold onto clients when they are beguiled by a salesman from another firm. One at a time. But when a broker leaves a firm and all of his clients are being called in the shark feeding frenzy where things are said (I had one guy I had worked with for nearly twenty years call my clients and say "I just wanted to call to let you know that all YOUR money is still here... So you don't need to worry about THAT!") and there is the public's tendency to expect people to love their jobs (especially the older generation) and the bosses that were gracious enough to give them to us, it's much harder. I did bring over 80+ percent of the clients I invited. But that means that the firm caused me to lose 20% of the clients I wanted. How is that fair? There ought to be a law!

I think independent b/ds put good pressure on branded b/ds, and offer a nice option.

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? The question was what the question was, not, is there another way?

I think independent b/ds put good pressure on branded b/ds, and offer a nice option. What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? The question was what the question was, not, is there another way?

First of all, this is ALL nothing but a market activity. You exercised your free market rights and:

I did bring over 80+ percent of the clients I invited. But that means that the firm caused me to lose 20% of the clients I wanted. How is that fair? There ought to be a law!

Are you seriously whining?

Like Indy says, if you take good care of clients, they're yours. That's crap and we all know it.

I guess we don't all know it, but it is true. At least you get some perspective here.

So if I understand correctly, you moved someonewhere, and now you feel like you should belong to a union? The irony is amusing. You work in a most brutally competitive industry, and the way you carve out a niche in the competition is through having a tight personal realationship with your clients. Since everything else is a commodity, an notion of a thing like a union is the true "crap".

By extension, things like Allreit's idea of the RIA platform being morally superior or more ethical or whatever, this is more "union crap".

In case you missed the point, the "independent" option and the RIA option is good for putting market pressure on b/ds to keep their costs competitive. Moving your book might be good for your business, but it is only once we get past our feelings that we can truely unite as professionals and have some power over the platform designers and managers who pull the strings - whether those string are b/d, RIA, "independent" or anything else "they" invent.

[quote=Whomitmayconcer]Like Indy says, if you take good care of clients, they’re yours. That’s crap and we all know it. Clients, taken care of or not, are still susceptible to salesmanship. Meanwhile, clients that have been taken care of should have gotten away from the “salesmanship” relationship with their broker. As such their resistance to the BS of a broker with the weight of the BOM (waving free accounts, lower margin costs, deep discounted trades for the first six month and other tchatchkas that the BOM would never have allowed the original broker to offer) behind him is lowered.

I'm able to hold onto clients when they are beguiled by a salesman from another firm. One at a time. But when a broker leaves a firm and all of his clients are being called in the shark feeding frenzy where things are said (I had one guy I had worked with for nearly twenty years call my clients and say "I just wanted to call to let you know that all YOUR money is still here... So you don't need to worry about THAT!") and there is the public's tendency to expect people to love their jobs (especially the older generation) and the bosses that were gracious enough to give them to us, it's much harder. I did bring over 80+ percent of the clients I invited. But that means that the firm caused me to lose 20% of the clients I wanted. How is that fair? There ought to be a law![/quote]

No, we don't all know it.  When I looked back at the accounts I didn't bring over that I wanted to (and there weren't a lot of these), while I might have initially been surprised a few times, when I took an honest look at the relationship, it was usually pretty easy to see why the client didn't come over.  Sometimes I got off on the wrong foot with them and never fully recovered.  Some were fairly new and I hadn't had the time necessary to solidify the relationship.  Some had an investment that didn't quite pan out the way I'd hoped.  For some, the client misunderstood some aspect of the investment and I lost that critical trust factor (see getting off on the wrong foot).

Try as we might, we can't please everyone.  I'll say it again and I absolutely believe this, if you take good care of the clients, they're yours.  If you don't, they're your former employer's.  Sure there are exceptions.  There will be clients who won't move because of stupid stuff, like inertia.  These are the exception.  Most of my clients would have moved even if I had substantially raised their fees/charges.  I got very, very few questions about fees.  Most clients just said "where do I sign?"  For those accounts I wanted that didn't ultimately move, after a year elapsed, I made sure they knew they were wanted, but I didn't poll each of them to determine why they didn't move.  I got feedback on a few and the reasons were mostly stupid/difficult to overcome. ("I want my investments with my checking account" (I decided that this client was too stupid to understand ACH, so I took a pass on trying to bring the relationship), "what would I do if you got killed?" (the same thing you'd do if I were still at the bank, dummy!))

I think the fact that you moved 80+% of your book proves my point.  You had good client relationships, so for the majority of your book, it didn't matter at all what incentives your former firm offered, they were moving regardless.  Poor client relationships/new relationships are susceptible to salesmanship.  Good clients? I'm not buying...

"So if I understand correctly, you moved someonewhere[sic], and now you feel like you should belong to a union? The irony is amusing. You work in a most brutally competitive industry, and the way you carve out a niche in the competition is through having a tight personal realationship[sic] with your clients. Since everything else is a commodity, an notion of a thing like a union is the true "crap"." Planrcoach

No planrcoach, what's irony is the material between your ears!

You don't understand correctly. This is a competitive business, but your fiercest competition should NOT be your firm!

I know that's the "way it is" and the "way it's always been" but that doesn't make it right. The firm has no right to have a claim to your book. The firm provided a service for which they were well and fully compensated. I'm not whining about not having brought over 20% of my book, dipsy doodle, I'm pointing out that we have accepted as inevitable that the firm will retain nearly a quarter of our book. A 25% commission to sell your firm and buy a new one. We accept this as "just a cost of doing business", somewhere else.

20%! What did they do to deserve that golden handshake? They screwed the broker over for X-number of years until he could stand being screwed no more, and left! That's great! Tell ya what. Next time a client takes an account away from you, go in and sell all their mutual funds and charge them a maximum commission to do so, then sell all their stocks, and mark the commission all the way up to 5% per! Then WTF, just charge them a termination fee of 15% so that you have the full 20%. They shouldn't be unhappy, after all, they got 80% of their money.

My clients are MY HARD EARNED MONEY! Nobody built that book but ME. I did it in spite of the colossal eff ups of the firm I worked for!

The clients have advocates, the firms have advocates and we brokers don't!

IF...well IF(it's a big if) Smith Barney decides that those 69 brokers are the sign of something bad and they decided to change their ways... It's too late for those 69. They can't go back to Barney. The change will only benefit those who didn't leave.

You see now?

[quote=Whomitmayconcer]

Dude!

The game is call "WHAT IF". Not "Why It'll Never Be That Way."

IFF (if and only if) a major wirehouse adopted the Indy b/d paradigm (and assumimng that they meant it and that their vested interest was not to nickle and dime you to death because you are always free to leave without interference for the firm) would you join?

Don't be a dick, answer the question hypothetically.

[/quote]

Dude?  "Don't be a dick?"  How old are you?

I'll give you a pass on that one, but any more name-calling and I simply won't participate in the discourse.

And by the way-you didn't start by asking for a "hypothetical answer", you just asked the question.  Besides, we all know in this business how useful "hypothetical answers" can be.  We live in the real world.

I spent about 13 years in "major wirehouses" in the biggest wirehouse market in the country, so forgive me for thinking I might know a little about how they think and operate.  Most management in wirehouses think that they are the be all and end all, and home of all talent that is worthwhile.  I know, I used to be "one of them" until I had a few eye-opening experiences.

FWIW I think Ron Carson and a host of other 7 figure producers might disagree.

So many of them are so blind and so ignorant to what goes on in the business outside their little cocoon.  An amusing anecdote:  When I resigned my BOM was out of town.  So, I submitted my letter on Friday morning to our branch compliance officer who was an officer of the firm and had the appropriate licensure to confirm my voluntary resignation to the NASD.  He was somewhat of a friend, and we'd worked together on a few charity projects.  He even joked with me that he wasn't going to accept my letter.  He knew I was serious when he saw I'd time stamped my copy just before I gave it to him, and also had a copy for him to countersign and give back to me.

So he asks me, natuarally, where I am going.  I tell him "LPL".  His response?  "Who is LPL?"  The largest indy firm in the whole farkin industry and he literally had no clue who they were, despite being a broker and then a compliance officer in the business for over a decade!  Unreal.

If and only if a major wirehouse adopted said paradigm, I suppose I would at some point have to give it some consideration.  Then again, that's what Wachovia essentially did for their indy b/d, and I still didn't feel comfortable with their culture and their mind-set.

Ultimately the wirehouses have such a "corporate" mindset, such a ruthless and relentless focus on maximizing short-term profits(at just about any cost as long as it's legal, or at least not illegal), that they would have an awful lot of wood to chop to convince me that they had truly adopted the paradigm.

After all, all they would have to do is lure you in, and then start shaving away at at the margins....raise a ticket charge here, slice back payouts on trails a little bit there, nibble a little more by increasing "admin retention" on fee based programs.  And then maybe take a few measures to make it a little harder to move.  Before you know it you hate it, but it's difficult at best to leave.  And then I'd be stuck in exactly the world I chose to leave nearly 2 years ago.

The indy firms essentially place no handcuffs on you, and acknowledge that you own your book.  That keeps them honest.  Shoot, our B/D has taken at least 2 measures to INCREASE our payouts in the last 18 months.  You see that happening at Smith Barney or BAC?

The wires and the banks are generally run by financial guys who have never had to work on a "payout" so all they are looking to do is figure out how they can extract the maximum profit margins from their salesforce.  Wirehouse managers are trained and incented and cultured to figure out from day ONE on the job to figure out how they can "nickle and dime" their advisors for greater profits.  Some may be better than others at helping the advisors succeed, but that would generally be my experience and opinion.

Call me naive, but I think the indy firms look at it from the standpoint that the better their technology, the more effective their back office, the more advisors they will attract, and they more productive they will be, and that's how they grow.

And that is my honest answer...not trying to "be a dick".

[quote=Whomitmayconcer]

But if you look at the “Protocol” it does absolutely NOTHING to help the broker, it only serves the firms involved (in that it’s like having “No-Fault Auto Insurance”). What broker group had any input into this process? Who was it that watched out for our best interests? NOBODY!

And the above surprises you because why?  Just consider the mindset and follow the money, and it all becomes clear.

But when a broker leaves a firm and all of his clients are being called in the shark feeding frenzy where things are said (I had one guy I had worked with for nearly twenty years call my clients and say “I just wanted to call to let you know that all YOUR money is still here… So you don’t need to worry about THAT!”)

I did bring over 80+ percent of the clients I invited. But that means that the firm caused me to lose 20% of the clients I wanted. How is that fair? There ought to be a law!

And that would be another reason why I would be loathe to step back into the wirehouse world.  Too many advisors like that who will be your buddy until they have your accounts distributed to them, and then they go right after them and say whatever needs to be said, because “after all it’s just business”.

If I were to submit my resignation to my b/d tomorrow, they would be contractually prohibited from having another advisor proactively contact my clients for a period of one full month.  Can you honestly say that you could imagine any wirehouse manager agreeing to that, or any wirehouse lawyer signing off on such a deal?  I would submit to you that it would require such a dramatic abandonment of the “clients are the firm’s property” ethos such as to be nearly impossible.  Not to mention when the local wirehouse-schooled BOM decides to try to bend the rules a bit for his advantage no matter what the contract says. Just my honest opinion.

[/quote]

"I'll say it again and I absolutely believe this, if you take good care of the clients, they're yours." Indyone 

Well then Shoot, it MUST be true. I mean if you said it again, and you realy truely believe it with all you heart and soul!

Indyone, arguing against this is like arguing against mom and apple pie and the flag. Yes we would all like to believe that this is 100% true, even though we all know that it is not 100% true. Some clients are just too scared to move, some of them are arses who would sell their own mother for free checking! Some of them think the grass is greener on the other side and when Joe Newguy looks through your position page and tells Mr. Client about all the ways he did better in this fund (buying it at lower prices before he advised you that it might be interesting to take a look at) and how he went long term in the bonds and then short term right at the bottom and then long term again at just the tipity top. The firm has an unfair advantage and it shares information it shouldn't be allowed to share until the client decides to hire Joe Newguy as his new broker. (If I recall my Series 7 Refresher, or was it the 9/10 test? As a broker, you are not supposed to share ANY specific client information except on a needs to know basis even with other brokers. So how does the firm get to just hand out that information to whomever they choose?)

"I think the fact that you moved 80+% of your book proves my point."Indyone

I think the fact that you think a 20% commission is fair proves my point.

Again, the "Protocol" says that the only information you are allowed to take with you is Name, Address and Phone number. You need to attest to the fact that you have no other information about these clients, ZERO! And if they think they can prove that you do (for example, by having the tech guys run through all the activity on your terminal over the last few weeks to see if you've been printing up statements or position pages or whathave you) Then IT'S ON Beyatch! They have all their TROing capabilities all over again (not to mention that your new firm is in danger of losing it's status as a "Protocol" firm, which could cost it millions, so you're not a favored son real quick like!

The ex-firm holds ALL the cards. They have all of your information with which to cast all sorts of aspersions on you. Now, maybe at a bank it's not so big a deal, because they don't have the same geographical advantage that a wirehouse does. But when you leave a wirehouse, there are up to dozens of brokers who are fed your book the day you leave (which is why there were 69 slaves who took Lincoln's advice and emancipated themselves before President's Weekend). Instantly they can see your positions, your profits and losses, your bond portfolio breakdown, maturity, income, duration, credit quality whatever and use that information to make a case against you.

And what do you have? Their name, their address and their phone number! And your relationship.

It's not a matter of "Can You Beat Them?"(especially where "wnning' is defined as keeping more than 70% of what is yours to start with. Keep in mind that many of the signing bonus packages give you your backend if you hit 80% of AUM in one year. Why is that? Because they know that statistically, you're lucky to have 75% and they'll never have to pay you that back end!) it's a matter of "It Unethical For Them To Be Going After Your Book In The First Place!"

[quote=Whomitmayconcer]

You don’t understand correctly. This is a competitive business, but your fiercest competition should NOT be your firm!

I know that's the "way it is" and the "way it's always been" but that doesn't make it right. The firm has no right to have a claim to your book. The firm provided a service for which they were well and fully compensated. I'm not whining about not having brought over 20% of my book, dipsy doodle, I'm pointing out that we have accepted as inevitable that the firm will retain nearly a quarter of our book. A 25% commission to sell your firm and buy a new one. We accept this as "just a cost of doing business", somewhere else.

20%! What did they do to deserve that golden handshake?

[/quote]

I agree completely....

"I'll give you a pass on that one, but any more name-calling and I simply won't participate in the discourse." Joe

You were being a dick! No two ways about it. Other than that, I was out of line, and I apologize.

"I spent about 13 years in "major wirehouses" in the biggest wirehouse market in the country, so forgive me for thinking I might know a little about how they think and operate.  Most management in wirehouses think that they are the be all and end all, and home of all talent that is worthwhile.  I know, I used to be "one of them" until I had a few eye-opening experiences."

Rooty toot tooty for you! Who hasn't? Your history is immaterial. The question is a hypothetical question. It assumes something different from what we think we know as fact (it may be fact it may not be fact, point is that we believe it to be factual) and we discuss from there. the point of the exercise is that we may discover something different from what we think today.

The rest of your post is human interesting, but still more of the same "It wouldn't ever happen because blah blah blah..."

The question reamins, "What if?" If I could work at a full sized firm where I had control of my cost structure and I had clarity as to how much of my reveune was going to pay for services that were provided to me so that I could determine if they were being provided at a fair market price and that I wasn't subsidizing other brokers and that my payout was at a level where I could afford to hire a team of brokers to work under me at a livable commission so that I could leverage my business. That I came out of the back end with a corporation of my own with revenues per share and retained earnings and a pension plan  and the ability to sell it to the highest bidder! Damn, I'd be interested in that.  

That's the firm I want to build!

[quote=Whomitmayconcer]

You were being a dick! No two ways about it. Other than that, I was out of line, and I apologize.

Thank you.

"I spent about 13 years in "major wirehouses" in the biggest wirehouse market in the country, so forgive me for thinking I might know a little about how they think and operate.  Most management in wirehouses think that they are the be all and end all, and home of all talent that is worthwhile.  I know, I used to be "one of them" until I had a few eye-opening experiences."

Rooty toot tooty for you! Who hasn't? Your history is immaterial.

Many folks on this very board "haven't".  My point in any case was not to impress you, merely to state that I speak from a position of first-hand experience.

The question reamins, "What if?" If I could work at a full sized firm where I had control of my cost structure and I had clarity as to how much of my reveune was going to pay for services that were provided to me so that I could determine if they were being provided at a fair market price and that I wasn't subsidizing other brokers and that my payout was at a level where I could afford to hire a team of brokers to work under me at a livable commission so that I could leverage my business. That I came out of the back end with a corporation of my own with revenues per share and retained earnings and a pension plan  and the ability to sell it to the highest bidder! Damn, I'd be interested in that.  

That's the firm I want to build!

It has already been built.  No need to reinvent the wheel.  I work at a "full size firm" with all that good stuff, and some of the best technology I've seen on the retail end.  http://www.lpl.com  , as a point of reference.

If you want to build one of your own, best of luck to ya!  But don't try to do it under a wirehouse shell they'll eventually figure out how to pick your pocket.

[/quote]

[quote=joedabrkr] [quote=Whomitmayconcer]

But if you look at the "Protocol" it does absolutely NOTHING to help the broker, it only serves the firms involved (in that it's like having "No-Fault Auto Insurance"). What broker group had any input into this process? Who was it that watched out for our best interests? NOBODY!

And the above surprises you because why?  Just consider the mindset and follow the money, and it all becomes clear.It doesn't surprise me. What surprises me is the complacency with which we accept the fact that these rules are adopted without our interests being addressed!

But when a broker leaves a firm and all of his clients are being called in the shark feeding frenzy where things are said (I had one guy I had worked with for nearly twenty years call my clients and say "I just wanted to call to let you know that all YOUR money is still here... So you don't need to worry about THAT!")

I did bring over 80+ percent of the clients I invited. But that means that the firm caused me to lose 20% of the clients I wanted. How is that fair? There ought to be a law!

And that would be another reason why I would be loathe to step back into the wirehouse world.  Too many advisors like that who will be your buddy until they have your accounts distributed to them, and then they go right after them and say whatever needs to be said, because "after all it's just business".

If I were to submit my resignation to my b/d tomorrow, they would be contractually prohibited from having another advisor proactively contact my clients for a period of one full month.  Can you honestly say that you could imagine any wirehouse manager agreeing to that, or any wirehouse lawyer signing off on such a deal? Not without being forced to! We won't even ask! We' don't have the ballz of Oliver! "Please Sir, I want some more!" I would submit to you that it would require such a dramatic abandonment of the "clients are the firm's property" ethos such as to be nearly impossible.  Not to mention when the local wirehouse-schooled BOM decides to try to bend the rules a bit for his advantage no matter what the contract says. Just my honest opinion. Joe, you're not telling me anything I don't know. I'm asking you to take the step through the looking glass to see things as they aren't so that you might stop telling us "Why" and start asking yourself "Why Not?"

It is, admittedly antithetical to suggest to brokers that they ought to belong to a collective bargaining unit. As I've noted, we're "businessmen" and we're "capitalists", we're "In Sales! You want a raise damnit you talk to the guy in the mirror!" But the plain fact that we have no representation at the bargaining table shows that we are NOT businessmen, we are sharecroppers. And just like in the Grapes Of Wrath, "The Bank" can hire someone with a combine tractor to come and plow us under, and if he hits our house off it's foundation while he's passing by, well there's a little extra in his pay envelope come payday for doin so!

I would agree that Wachovia's Finet IS sort of like the wirehouse Indy. But I don't see the Indy paradigm worth a bucket of warm spit if you're going to be a one man branch. It only makes sense if you intend on using it to grow to a point where you're doing twelve to fifteen million per year and then you form your own B/D. By that time you'll have between 50 and 100 brokers working under you, and the question remains, how will your firm be different from day one than the wirehouses?

[/quote][/quote]

Good discussion. Joe, thanks for taking the trouble to provide some insight.

It just goes to show, there are so many ways to run your practice.

I have stayed with my branded b/d, but run my own office and enjoy the benefits of the brand.

Joe, you make some good comments about the home office - corporate mentality.

Flip side, in visiting some independent b/ds, I realized how "easy" it would be to start one and provide profitable services to rrs.

Better to go RIA, if I leave the b/d environment.

Whomitmay, congrats on your hard work and accomplishments. You do sound a little bitter about leaving the nest.

With regard to the advisor - client relationship, you will discover over time what has been discussed here. You will probably discover that taking client relationships to the next level is the most leveragable, productive thing you can do - in any environment. From this will flow referrals and satisfaction and success that will make all of the other questions - like "home office", payouts, even compliance - look almost distant. But enough pontificating - I admire your fire and idealism.

It is, admittedly antithetical to suggest to brokers that they ought to belong to a collective bargaining unit. As I've noted, we're "businessmen" and we're "capitalists", we're "In Sales! You want a raise damnit you talk to the guy in the mirror!" But the plain fact that we have no representation at the bargaining table shows that we are NOT businessmen, we are sharecroppers. And just like in the Grapes Of Wrath, "The Bank" can hire someone with a combine tractor to come and plow us under, and if he hits our house off it's foundation while he's passing by, well there's a little extra in his pay envelope come payday for doin so!

But this is the stuff of Steinbeck. Kind of like teachers belonging to a union. If you think about, what kind of message are we sending to our kids? Go out, get a college degreee, become a professional, and join a union.

Then, the union will fight tooth and nail against anything competitive, like a free market voucher system.

And so the reason I suggested you were whining is, first of all, you did a good job to bring 80% of your book. But, if you think about it, the wirehouses are really the only people that train in our industry, aren't they? And then, you have efficient platforms like LPL to come along and take the fruits of that investment.

I'm not making a judgement, other than to say, come on, be realistic. Training costs a lot more than you think. It is just ironic as h*** that you take this planned market intervention all the way to the level of the Grapes of Wrath.

Then you have guys who go to RIA, also taking the fruits of their training, and trying to make a moral virtue out of it.

And to all of this I say, boy, as professionals, we have really got us in a condition of economic ignorance about who we really are as a self-aware group of industry professionals.

OMG I forgot "ABOUT THE CHILDREN"!

How about you let ME worry about what I teach my children?

I was taught that collective bargaining units are a good thing, and yet here I am working in this business. Been doing so for 20 years now! I've watched this industry take advantage of brokers each and every day. I've listened to management tell me that they had no choice because "everybody else is doing this anyway" as they cut our pay and increased their own. I'd been with one firm for 17 years, if I averaged $250,000 per year (over the 17 years) and if 10% of my earnings went to training costs, that's more than $400,000. My training costs were well paid for, but my former firm appreciates your concern!

If you work for a firm, you are a sharecropper, you work their land with your sweat and sinew, you take what they'll give you, and they'll give you less and less, "if you don't like it, you're free to leave, but know that your book will have to make it through this lynchmob. Somewhere between 20 and 50% won't make it! Are you sure it's so bad here that you're willing to risk that?"

I'm sorry you feel the way you do, I figured you must have some strong feelings, and 17 years is a long time and a big financial and emotional investment.

Please, teach you own kids whatever you want - you will anyway, just as you exercise your right to move your book.

I decided to stay with my broker dealer, partly for economic reason, precisely what you describe. I pay a cost, and enjoy benefits. Don't agree  with much of how things are structured, and hope to influence them by patiently "suffering". ( And keeping my own costs down, and not rewarding inappropriate behaviours.)

But I thank God for freedom, and the free market. The unions served a good purpose and ended up destroying much, including part of our education system. Maybe in automobiles, the unions themselves were used to support profit max in producing profitable but unstainable products that led to the fall of both worker and management. But the market will find a proper course.  Let this all be a lesson, let's use our optimism and good energy to unite as professionals in consciousness and not fight each other as victims of the competitive economic evolution of our industry, which is basically good and not inherently diabolically evil,  anyway.

"But I thank God for freedom, and the free market."

How appropriate that you thank a fictious construct for a ficticious economic ideal.

You work in one of the nation's most highly regulated businesses and you think there is a "Free Market Economy." as we have been known to say when the internet was the tool of Libertarianism;

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah ahahahahahahaha!!!!!

It's so much fun watching you use the language of "the power of positive thought" to be negative.

It's quite enjoyable to see you believe that your Ghandi ish patient suffering will melt the hearts of the management of this industry.

It's a delight to see this gentle soul pretend that the free market's machinations and mastications of mankind is all for our best long term interests.  

I would agree that Wachovia's Finet IS sort of like the wirehouse Indy. But I don't see the Indy paradigm worth a bucket of warm spit if you're going to be a one man branch. It only makes sense if you intend on using it to grow to a point where you're doing twelve to fifteen million per year and then you form your own B/D. By that time you'll have between 50 and 100 brokers working under you, and the question remains, how will your firm be different from day one than the wirehouses?

Are you kidding? As upset as you are about your former employer chasing your book, why on earth would you NOT go independent and once and for all, rid yourself of all the corporate BS you've described and the feeding frenzy that commences once you get fed up and move?!!  As a one-man shop, I couldn't disagree with you more.  I have far more freedom, none of the corporate bullsh*t and a much higher payout than I did as an employee.  Sure, I intend to leverage up to 3-4 employees at some point, but that's it...I don't have any aspirations to build a kingdom, but I do believe that what I have now as an owner is far better than the crap I took as an employee.

Bottom line is, you and I agree on a lot of things.  Sure, I think it's crap that employers use questionable tactics and imply things about departing brokers that are at best, inaccurate and at worst, slanderous.  I agree that some customers are easily swayed and stay/move away from you for stupid reasons.  On the 80/20 thing, we're splitting hairs.  You think it's horrible that the former employer keeps 20% of the book.  I say good riddance.  If those 20% decided to stay, really, how good were they as clients?  They obviously weren't loyal.  They obviously didn't wholeheartedly believe in what you were telling them.  They obviously weren't good at listening to your advice.  Why the hell do you want them?!!  Yes, I believe you wanted them and were disappointed to see them not move.  I was too in a few cases, but for the most part, it wasn't hard for me to see that I wasn't really losing much.  Instead of focusing on those clients that stayed behind, I focused on new business that will be loyal to me.

I don't expect you to agree, but at least you know how I feel...

"But I thank God for freedom, and the free market."

How appropriate that you thank a fictious construct for a ficticious economic ideal.

Just about sums it up. Having lived in Socialist China about 25 years ago, I find it amusing that you view the free market as being a fictitious construct, yet work in this particular industry. Even as the wrath of the market is felt on this day.

It's a delight to see this gentle soul pretend that the free market's machinations and mastications of mankind is all for our best long term interests.  

Sorry that you feel I am being disingenuous. Don't shoot the messenger.

 

Indy,

This is not about the people who didn't come. It's about the rights of the firm to get involved at all.

As the top of a three man shop (looking to add!) I can agree that there are many days that I long to be all alone again. But I've told myself I'm a capitalist for far too long for me to be happy just being a mom and pop business. I love my clients, I love buying and selling assets for a profit. I don't want to constantly be on the prowl for more clients. I'd rather bring in two or three guys per year (for now, accelerating as the business grows) and give them the opportunity to grow and prosper in a firm that sees them as the primary client, that treats them with the respect and dignity that they deserve. There won't be that backstabbing at my firm because there is no percentage in it. Why stab somebody if there is nothing to be gained from doing so?

It's not that I agree or disagree with you, it's that you don't seem to get the point. And that is that the the firm is being unethical (and even breaking the rules of the exchange) and will continue to be so until we, the brokers unite and demand a seat at the discussion table.