wcgortel

It's true that the banks aren't really as concerned with maximizing an investor's return in their wealth management divisions, but it's also worth noting that they maybe shouldn't be engaged in that sort of activity. The likelihood that the random fellow you happen to meet at Morgan Stanley actually has an edge on beating the market is small enough to be irrelevant.

However, there's still some value in having a human who's somewhat familiar with you and your personality pick up the phone when you call to execute a trade. Most of the value that advisers offer is getting you to stay in the market over time by keeping you from making stupid decisions. They're certainly incentivized to do so, but a lot of investors lose out by making thoughtless, fear-driven decisions to buy and sell. The actual amount that they lose out varies, but I've seen a range of around 2-8% in a number of studies. This [1] says average investors lag the index by 5% a year, which I'm inclined to believe.

Part of the issue that Murtza is likely experiencing is that this psychological function of a financial adviser--getting people to keep their investments in place over the long term--does not feel good. In fact, it feels like lying and it is.

The question for most investors isn't whether they can get a better return by switching to a passively managed fund, but rather whether they have the discipline to manage their own investments when they get scared/exuberant. This is not to say that advisers aren't prone to the same behavioral defects, but it's probably better to have someone on the other end of the phone who will try to get you to explain why you're selling out or buying in.

The problem for a lot of employees--particularly in the private wealth space--is that they think they're getting involved in some mythical "Wall Street," which doesn't really exist. Good advisers are 90% Mom (calms you down when you're excited) 10% psychiatrist (gives you tools to help yourself). They are not investors. They are in the business of preventing harm.

Of course, scummy advisers exist and are the standard. I'm just suggesting they are not the only kind in existence.

Full disclosure: I work in finance in an advisory capacity.

[1] http://moneyover55.about.com/od/howtoinvest/a/averageinvesto...

It does sound a bit "pitchy" though, especially if the comparison isn't direct. If you're telling Coke about what you did for Pepsi that's one thing. If you're telling Unilever about your work for Proctor and Gamble that's another.

Also, most people with financial experience will realize that a bottom line (net income) is an easily manipulated number. I don't think your generalization is appropriate.

The present value of your efforts at time 0 (the present) would be much higher if you bought apple in time -15 and then returned to the present than if you spooled off a bunch of stock market history at time 15 and then returned to time 0 and dutifully executed your trades.

Of course, it would probably be easier to pull off the second approach (a-la back to the future 2) than the first, since opening a brokerage account in time -15 would likely cause unwanted contact with your past self.

You also run a chance of your past self discovering your plan and fooling about with it in time -14.9 - 0. I guess that lowers your expected value by a figure that depends on your probability of being caught.

At the end of the day, it's probably less of a headache to just buy an index fund.

Seriously -- I was going to recommend this to some colleagues , but twitter-only totally nerfs it.

This is a good statistic to raise, but it's not a direct comparison. The US prison population probably has much more in common with ordinary North Koreans than these individuals.

These are the blogs, not the business review itself. I understand the quality standards are lower in the former.

To me, "winning" in social sounds a lot like "winning" the war on drugs. It's a struggle for a concept, not a tangible objective.

Like most hyped tech, there's genuine value to social strategy. However, Google's core business - providing an information index - will be valuable with or without one.

Fred Kantor wrote a book called "Information Mechanics" in 1976, which treats the same topic.

There's significant risk (the potential permanent departure of an iconoclastic chief executive) that is being incorporated into their stock price.

Also, analysis of the cash per share at a large technology company should generally be viewed differently than it might be at a manufacturing company or somewhere else. Tech companies are subject to violent earnings fluctuations based on changes in consumer demand. Cash stockpiles are a hedge against that eventuality in addition to an asset.

I went to a prepschool with a strong honor code culture. Cheating was nonexistent at the higher level classes I was in but it was pretty rampant among those in less intensive class distributions.

I think the deciding factor in successfully inculcating the value of fairness in academia is ensuring the students actually value academia. If the work's viewed as strictly an impediment by a student there's almost no way to change that.

The natural subsidy model for Kindles (to me) has always been subscribe (to publication x) for a period certain, get a reduced-price device.

My suspicion is that this is an incremental development which will serve as a transition to a new pricing structure. As hardware costs decline, one of the largest variables in the pricing structure for these devices will come to be estimations of customers' future spends in the store.

Any model that guarantees a spend is likely to find traction, and I expect to see multiple subsidy models emerging.

As a non-technical guy, I'd like very much to be evaluated on those criteria. I think ya'll should be looking for something else though: Will this guy need to hire a ton of employees?

If you're looking at someone with a history, that history needs to be evaluated both in the context of the corporate resources available and the size of his team. Be aware that managing a large team might mean helplessness in a small one.