[quote=Philo Kvetch][quote=NASD Newbie]

[quote=ezmoney]You're a big fat bear who made a moderate income throughout your career.  What do you do now newbie?[/quote]

Trade Google options and go out of town for a month at a time four or five times a year.

[/quote]

Obviously there are many others who can't stand to have you around.

[/quote]

Somebody with good mental health would have said, "Hey, that sounds like fun.  Where have you been, where do you plan to go?"

But this sad sack, peering up from the sewer through the green eyes of envy, comes up with that.  Sad, pathetic even.

Thanks for the response Jeff....Newbie...maybe new FAs entering biz in a bear, will grab assets from unhappy investors displeased with the do it yourself mutual fund industry...

or grab some BIG assets from the wealthly unhappy with their 2/20% arrangements with hedge funds buying crude and metal futures with big leverage- trying in earnest to beat the averages and blowing up..

Need to press hard to earn 2 & 20% on AUM...Can't be all doom and gloom, I think replacing hedge funds rich/risky dealings with sound FA relationships... may make offer some hope in bear....who knows....

[quote=Rugby]

Thanks for the response Jeff....Newbie...maybe new FAs entering biz in a bear, will grab assets from unhappy investors displeased with the do it yourself mutual fund industry...

or grab some BIG assets from the wealthly unhappy with their 2/20% arrangements with hedge funds buying crude and metal futures with big leverage- trying in earnest to beat the averages and blowing up..

Need to press hard to earn 2 & 20% on AUM...Can't be all doom and gloom, I think replacing hedge funds rich/risky dealings with sound FA relationships... may make offer some hope in bear....who knows....

[/quote]

As somebody who knows a bit about entering the biz during a bear market I will agree that investors who would have never considered talking to you might just talk to you after all.

However, that does not mean that they're going to be all that eager to trust you.  When an investor sees a huge portion of his life savings simply disappear it is going to be difficult to get him to believe he should keepdoing what he's been doing--just with a different person.

The reality is that most people will go to cash--and there will be a huge number of arbitrations as people line up to raise their hand and swear that they were not told that their money was going to be locked up for ten years or something in a VA. They will actually believe you did not tell them, so will the arbitrators.

Your firm will be ordered to make the client whole--that will mean liquidating the VA.  The manager will have to sell the holdings to get the cash, the selling will drive prices lower and somebody else will raise their hand and swear that their advisor failed to tell them.....

Meanwhile the media will keep up a drum beat of negativity, some simply negative spin but some actual bad news.  Interest rates will be rising, homes will be being repossed, stories will appear on ABC News about a guy who just committed suicide because his retirement plan was worth so little that he could not retire.

Y'all just don't know what it can be like--you're like a bunch of sheep standing around telling each other, "Nothings wrong here....."

Newbie-

You started right before a bear and survived.  Were you a producer or in branch managemen, or other during this time who had to witness the carnage?

Did you ever read the book Confessions of a Stockbroker by Brutus? If not, I'd bet you enjoy it. 

[quote=NASD Newbie][quote=Philo Kvetch][quote=NASD Newbie]

[quote=ezmoney]You're a big fat bear who made a moderate income throughout your career.  What do you do now newbie?[/quote]

Trade Google options and go out of town for a month at a time four or five times a year.

[/quote]

Obviously there are many others who can't stand to have you around.

[/quote]

Somebody with good mental health would have said, "Hey, that sounds like fun.  Where have you been, where do you plan to go?"

But this sad sack, peering up from the sewer through the green eyes of envy, comes up with that.  Sad, pathetic even.

[/quote]

In all the time you've been posting here under your various personae, you haven't once mentioned being anywhere else, save your forays into internet sales on eBay.  Given your penchant for the fantastic, you wouldn't have been able to refrain from crowing about it.  Ergo, you haven't been anywhere.

I think you're just a lonely, self-involved BS artist.

See you in the funny papers, piker!

[quote=ezmoney]You're a big fat bear who made a moderate income throughout your career.  What do you do now newbie?[/quote]

He told us on another thread that he rides around the city on a train reading Parade magazine

[quote=Gone Indy]

[quote=ezmoney]You're a big fat bear who made a moderate income throughout your career.  What do you do now newbie?[/quote]

He told us on another thread that he rides around the city on a train reading Parade magazine

[/quote]

CORRECTION! He said he didn't NEED to read it to know what it was about.... he's  Carnac the Magician now!

It's a pretty hard board, if you express anything beyond sales bravado and Pollyanna you become a target and the exchanges go south quickly. It should be a trade forum where you can discuss perhaps special interest or complicated industry topics without fear on mockery and abuse but it is what it is.

* If it's such a great business why is there such fear, paranoia, insecurity, turnover, lawsuits of all shapes and sizes, excess regulation, scapegoating, acts of fraud, wage and price controls through regulatory proxy, defamation and in-fighting of many sorts all of which dominate most related trade journals?

I'm not saying you can't find these features in other industries but are you telling me there is an industry with as much of this as ours? (Health care I would say is the nearest example) Are you trying to tell newer people that the situation has gotten better on a median basis for producers in the last ten years? (If yes, send me a PM as I have bridge to sell you, again we're judging the median results not the special case or anecdotal success as if we are infomercial participants. )

Don't waste your time smearing at posters but address the points made. It seems a little dense to label anyone who points out any of the obvious above which our own trade journals spend much of their time reporting on that they are being negative and are therefore losers from this ever positive (in their own mind) board consensus.

Nothing I said was an attack on Jeff or others who posted encouraging statements about the profession but I thought to add a little balance which I would argue is sorely lacking as a rule. If we are professionals and not sales people would should do away with that overhang of the past as well. What's obvious of course is that the industry wants to impose professional liability on you while at the same time it wants to maintain the same product pushing/numbers counting sales culture it has always had. How firms get away with being both the judge and jury while they often exempt themselves is one thing. How participants these rationalize these topics are another.

You shouldn't come to this board to get stupid about your industry. A little salt with the sales management hype isn't going to kill anyone.

[quote=Rugby]

Thanks for the response Jeff…

Glad I could help.

The above list was not meant to be exhaustive.  Yes, I should have included the growth of regulation as another bullet point, but the message was already pretty long.  Hopefully it's a good place to start.

Keep in mind that the regulars on this board seem to fall into several distinct categories.

<span style=“font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”;”>             

Please note that a favorite pass-time of the first two categories is discussing
who falls in which category.


Sometimes people suggest that I help people on this board because it is
in my enlightened self interest as a recruiter.  Who cares?  I never hide my identity or my
agenda, so my pro-industry bias is there for all to see.  I think that my
target audience is smart enough to keep my comments in context.



And no, I’m not saying that everybody on this board is smart.  Just the
ones I’m trying to reach.

Great posts Jeff and Seeker!

Why is this a great business?  Unlimited income potential and freedom to craft your business however you wish!!(AT least if you’re independent!!)

Seeker you comment that firms want to impose professional liability on us, yet maintain the same product pushing sales driven culture.  This is not true for all firms, certainly not of LPL in my experience.  I suspect you’ll find little or no product pushing or other pressure from firms in the indy channel.  It just won’t work in the current business model.

That might not be the case in the wirehouse/regional/bank platforms.
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Jeff, I had no problem with your post at all, your agenda or this thread. It should be pointed out in the recruiting process you get paid by firms the way real estate agents generally get paid by property sellers. In both cases whose interest is most served?

Joe,

When they list producers internally at LPL do they not rank them by production? Do you think they do this at CPA, law or medical firms? What would you think of them if they did so?

There certainly might be a tinge of hypocrisy on those entities because you can soon figure out who the rain makers are in these organizations but it's all part of the "you are number" degradation in this industry that actually works against your image and the interests of financial service producers in a more special way. Think Danny De Vito in "Tin Men" if you want a bad image to be associated to.

I wouldn't get too comfortable about LPL, take a look at the other major "independents" and reconsider your claim. Quota's, restrictions and interference are the growing norm. You didn't address the "R" as in "risk" topic either. Are you more or less likely to be made a patsy today or five years ago if even a weak complaint is filed?

Next comes a swell of "it's the regulators fault" but guess who the regulators are in many cases on many topics? 

Seeker-

They do list the top producers overall and in each category on the back of the firm’s monthly newsletter.  I get what you’re saying.  Then again, this is a numbers business, and for that matter I suspect if you were able to find a suitable metric you would find the top quartile financial advisor is far more profitable and productive than the top quartile CPA or medical professional.

There are quotas as LPL, but frankly their pretty low.

Not concerned about “risk”.  I keep good documentation, treat my clients right, and have a lawyer.  Wirehouse attorneys nowadays will just settle and leave it to your branch manager to “negotiate” your “share” anyway because they’re so overloaded with cases.
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[quote=joedabrkr]Seeker-

There are quotas as LPL, but frankly their pretty low.

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What are the repurcussions if you don't hit the quota?

[quote=NASD Newbie]

[quote=joedabrkr]Seeker-

There are quotas as LPL, but frankly their pretty low.

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What are the repurcussions if you don't hit the quota?

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Joe,

I was making some abstract points. People want to discuss business in general but there is plenty of "I do this" and "this happened to him" etc.

It's the systematic things this board could address. Fighter pilots can't worry about getting shot down I guess but your comment on "risk" is naive. You should care plenty about the moving goal posts on that issue but again my comment wasn't about you personally when I gave it. I was addressing the topic of the general state of affairs in this business and I think I'm on target. These are things people should  consider when they enter this business or about their particular firms or certainly recruiters should have the skinny, many don't as rule or worse suppress negative information, like an undisclosed but well known leak a real estate agent doesn't mention for fear of a sale going down. Some firms are worse than others but generally the entire system is stacked against people out in the field first. This is worth knowing aside from every name in a phone book could be a client in the future.

Look at the bitterness on the Jones threads for example, do you really not think if there was better common knowledge out there some of this couldn't be avoided? It's that general point that I was making when I commented.

Best of luck to all.

[quote=BrokerRecruit]Believe me, I don’t.  I could give two **its what some tool thinks.[/quote]

I agree as regards your comments about compliance.  That’s why I’m happy to be indy and at least a few steps removed from that mindset!