As long as we’re all having fun!

[quote=Whomitmayconcer][quote=Indyone]

[quote=Whomitmayconcer]And its stupid trying to have an intellectual discussion with persons who refuse to use their intellect.[/quote]

...and yet we continue to attempt to do so with you...shame on us...

[/quote]

Come on Indyone! I'm putting some effort into this. I'm making good, solid fourth and fifth level snarks. You're going for the gimmes!

Step Up YOUR game!

Freedom05!

It sounds like you know this situation, personally. I know that if I had 70,000,000 new dollars under management, this is the last place I'd be!

He must be taking a "Yeah! Right!" as a "Yes".

A blast. No only, hoomit, you came to mind off the forum last night, while listening to a conservative pontificate about liberals.

He said something like, the difference is, liberals are shameless and irreproachable and reckless, for example, in their public disdain for that which they oppose.

And I thought of you, pontificating at the pool table at the union hall. Actually, some of your stuff is pretty funny, and as you know, your intellect towers, so from my point of view, thanks for keeping me entertained ( call any vegetable).

A snark is like an insult without the intent of actual injury.

Ya' know, Planr, I like your style!

This reminds me of when I used to be in 6th grade. At recess we used to play this game; I would stand at one end of the field and the entire male population of the NYOBcentral school district 6th grade would be on the other end. Then we would run at each other and their object was to knock me down, trip me up before I could get past them all to the goal behind them.

I don't remember how this game got started, all I remember is that we all had a tremendous amount of fun and that I almost always made it through the crowd to the goal, and then we'd do it again.

I guess it was like our own mosh pit, long before there needed to be a band playing before boys could crash into each other without someone being called "Queer" (as we used to refer to each other... Just that I'm perfectly clear here, I'm married with two kids! I just mean that we used to... ah hell, if you don't know, I'm not going to be able to make you understand!).

I was popular and well liked, it wasn't like they were picking on me, its just that they knew that I could take them all on, and win.

Thanks for reminding me of that! That memory had faded!

I was popular and well liked, it wasn't like they were picking on me...

Left yourself open there.

We called in British Bulldog, played in the basement of the institution of the fictitious construct.

Problem was, when everybody got tired, and it was getting down to the end, the last kids usually got dropped on the cement floor.

There was a kid there that reminded me of you, a tough little scrappy kid, kind of obnoxious, but fun ... we nicknamed him oblong.

So back to the liberal conservative stuff, I am picturing this Sean Penn sort of tragic figure ( from that movie where the friend gets kidnapped in Bridgeport, CT, great movie) - I thing you might be that adult child. Lord (sorry) knows I was never obnoxious.

[quote=FREEDOM05]NOFX-I can't blame you for poaching this guy's book.  I'm sure you haven't received a quality referral in months.  Truth be told; if the program  over there was as good as advertised, you wouldn't have time to dig through this book let alone post here daily.  You are and have always been a bottom feeder and I suspect 50% of your $400k in annual revenue comes from handouts from the "Firm".  They know they have a genuine "rat" working for them and you will surely do all you can do bad mouth a hard working X-employee and preserve those clients. I'm sure you service them well.  Your allocation models are surely flawless as well.  Anyone can pick a part an allocation model after the fact so for you to brag about how you have "saved" some of these older clients from unsuitable recommendations is a Joke.  You're a hack!!  Keep bragging about all the good you do for a firm everyone knows will throw you to the wolves as soon as they can figure out how save a few Xtra $$.   In 2 years you'll be working for a modeste salary begging for a high client delight score so you can get your $10k bonus in 10 year restrcted stock.  Or perhaps you can go into management and F**K the brokers instead of just the ones who have the balls to leave. [/quote]

Mom?

Good one, NOFX!

Planet,

Didn't see the movie. Not a big big fan of Sean Penn, surly without the humor.

His wife was over at my house, shooting that movie with Paul Newman and Kevin Costner, Sean kept sort of lurking around all morose and whatnot.

Funny thing about this is that the first time Paul Newman was in my neighborhood was because Joanne Woodward was shooting a movie and he was alley catting around.

I was watching Cool Hand Luke the other day (colorized version) MAN, says I, that guy can ACT! It's such a different level that Newman was at versus guys like Tom Cruise, today! Every cell in Newman's body was Luke! Today the character is the actor reciting different dialog.

Yeah, well that was my point, Sean is a morose liberal.

Cool Hand Luke, that is a movie. Newman walks the talk. I was living in a dump in West Virginia doing social work while he was camped out at the race track next door (Summit point). Chasing cars and women, I guess.  Yep, Tom C. looks silly at the Academies next to real character like Clint. Guess that is one way we keep track of time.

So I guess we can agree, the way to kick some b/d butt, in terms of the union thing and all that - is staying power. If we live long enough, we'll be all that's left that's real.

[quote=NOFX]

[quote=FREEDOM05]NOFX-I can't blame you for poaching this guy's book.  I'm sure you haven't received a quality referral in months.  Truth be told; if the program  over there was as good as advertised, you wouldn't have time to dig through this book let alone post here daily.  You are and have always been a bottom feeder and I suspect 50% of your $400k in annual revenue comes from handouts from the "Firm".  They know they have a genuine "rat" working for them and you will surely do all you can do bad mouth a hard working X-employee and preserve those clients. I'm sure you service them well.  Your allocation models are surely flawless as well.  Anyone can pick a part an allocation model after the fact so for you to brag about how you have "saved" some of these older clients from unsuitable recommendations is a Joke.  You're a hack!!  Keep bragging about all the good you do for a firm everyone knows will throw you to the wolves as soon as they can figure out how save a few Xtra $$.   In 2 years you'll be working for a modeste salary begging for a high client delight score so you can get your $10k bonus in 10 year restrcted stock.  Or perhaps you can go into management and F**K the brokers instead of just the ones who have the balls to leave. [/quote]

Mom?

[/quote]

Best one of the day!

"So I guess we can agree, the way to kick some b/d butt, in terms of the union thing and all that - is staying power. If we live long enough, we'll be all that's left that's real." Planrcoach

Your anti-union stance is really uninspired.  There's nothing new or insightful about the position you've mentioned.

Meanwhile, your "we'll wait them out" stance is insipid.

Sorry, that's just the way that it is.

Well, the love fest is over, then.

So you think unions are the wave of the future in this industry, or is this just wistful thinking?

Because the issue is to influence the behaviours of b/d.

Survival is not inspiration, but we were talking about people leaving b/ds - moving to so called independent bds, or RIA in droves, or whatever.

That's free market pressure, and there is a ton of it on b/ds now - margin compression, migration, regulation. The fancy wirehouses are trying to create unique products for the very wealth, in fact pushing out "lower" producing rrs.

BUT many mass market boomers are in trouble, and I think they will need access to risk transfer products (insurance, annuites) to solve the retirement income problem. Thus, the role of RIA is limited in terms of being full service, even to boomers with a few hundred thousand bucks, and the need for b/d platform at this mass market level, where I operate with great independence, is relatively assured, for now.

The problem with creating a union, short of a professional consortium of the likes of the FPA, is, we are an intellectual and emotional diaspora, so we don't need more politics. I dranks some beers with an ex FPA president at a meeting out in the Oregon desert one night and this fellow seemed obsessed with some aspect of charging planning fees - his idea of planning. Whatever, it seemed like his entertaining  his own unique idea was more fun than doing the hour to hour work of the business.

However, to the the extent that and FPA as intellectual consortium and potential unifer in the sense of your Cesar Chavez notion, okay, let's get unified and start pushing back on the excesses of the broker dealers. That effort needs to be economic, there are two jug u lars. First, excesses of the industry of serving b/d changers. Second, the excesses of the b/d trainers. 

What your fruit picking constituants need to do is to figure out how to take responsibility for training the next generation of planners. Without having them being thrown to the wolves of big business. The way to do that is through mentoring.

So lets form a mentoring brother and sisterhood.

As a hobby, I started a little web site, just to try to give back a little. Not for personal gain, as the master I serve is my clients.

You can do Do DO your thing. Just do it. This is what I mean by staying power. There was a famous fellow in history - an intellectual construct if you will - who did that. In fact, there have been several, in different cultures. And recently, you had people like Mother Theresa, of course we could only emulate one small gesture of her behaviour. And I give you, Cesar Chavez.

"So you think unions are the wave of the future in this industry, or is this just wistful thinking?"

Unions ? Wave?

Calm yourself! Do I think that one day there will be a collective bargaining unit designed to represent the brokers in this industry? Hmmmmmmm? Do I?

Well I'll say this (first of all, Ever is a long time, Never, as in not ever, is too long of a time for me to project over.) there certainly ought to be.

You cannot have a free market unless all participants have the ability to influence the market. The only influence we can assert now is leaving. But, given the advantages that the firm has over the departing broker, the effect of our leaving is trivialized. And look at the story of the guy whoes leaving started this thread, he went to another wirehouse. That is a net zero effect on the dialog. SB doesn't care that 69 guys left, when they know they have 69 coming in and they come in with 8 year handcuffs!

NOFX's company isn't going to change their ways when they can keep a significant %age of the guy's assets anyway, and now they're in the hands of someone who is going to rip them a new bunghole just to prove to them that he is a much more dynamic broker than the last guy. A customer isn't a client until they buy something from you, don't forget!

The indy market is puny in comparison to the wirehouse. What are there? 13,000 at LPLRJ? Of whom 9,000 do north of $100,000 gross? Those are the major Indy names and from there you go into captured indys who work for/with an insurance companies b/d. And the insurance co.s don't look to be overly thrilled with the business model themselves, Pac Life looks to be getting out of the business(if I read it right).

RIAs? Did you read about the 15 year Ponzi Scam that is going to rock the RIA folks? (and don't think the wirehouse boys won't be behind the regulators and media to bring down the hammer HARD on those guys)  

Scattered resistance and splintered efforts don't lead to an effective campaign.

But, do I expect brokers to smarten up enough to join into a collective bargaining agreement? HELL NO! Haigh EE ELL ELL NO!

Most will want to sit back and not join until the unit has enough success, then they'll want to take advantage of that success and kibitz about how it was going to happen eventually anyway and so we'll wait to see what happens next. And then when the unit gets smashed and bashed and crashed and trashed, they'll be able to kiss the bossman's arse and say, "See? I told you it'd never work!"

Who else thinks these two are the same person…

Way to pick up the ball and run, blarm.

But, do I expect brokers to smarten up enough to join into a collective bargaining agreement? HELL NO! Haigh EE ELL ELL NO!

Most will want to sit back and not join until the unit has enough success, then they'll want to take advantage of that success and kibitz about how it was going to happen eventually anyway and so we'll wait to see what happens next.

So anyway, I basically agree with everything you are saying here. For that matter, I can see that there are plenty of salespeople affiliated with the profession that aren't even that bright.

So much for trying to change the world, with regard to the power of the b/ds, then. As the Chinese say, " the nail that sticks up gets hammered down."

It just proves my point, find a niche, be a good person, try to lead by personal example. Suffer the slings and arrows, be ethical, be consistent.

And, I do respect you for getting a bit pissed off and blowing some steam about it. In fact, I have had to train myself to minimize contact with things that set me off. This too, has been a growing experience ( ultimately makes me a better person, at great financial cost, but over time, even that seems to be less important).

( Darn, I wish that Blarm character wasn't so perceptive, now everyone knows I  have become a schitzo.)

[quote=blarmston]Who else thinks these two are the same person…[/quote]

You may be right, adn if you are, then somebody has WAAAAAAAAY too much free time on their hands, and a morass of “issues” as well, IMHO.

Yeah, Joe, some real complex, esoteric stuff we're tackling here. Better stick with, "The only one making money passing are quarterbacks, and I dont see a number on your chest."

I'm not sure Joe even knows the one who I used to be yet. He knows the two that I am only because I told him.

And not everybody needs to strain their brain for thirty minutes before they can concoct bon mots like "You may be right, adn if you are, then somebody has WAAAAAAAAY too much free time on their hands, and a morass of "issues" as well, IMHO."

Sometimes when I read your posts Joe, I can almost see the arteries on the sides of your head popping out from the strain! It's like you're trying to take a poop through your fingers!

Hey. cool,If I have three identities and Planrcoach makes four, I'm a Quadrophenic!

Laugh and say I'm green

I seen things you never seen.

Talk behind my back!

I'm off the beaten track!

I'll take on anyone!

Ain't scared of a bloody nose!

Drin....err ummm we'll leave it at that...