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What is your experience with brokers and financial advisors?

Sep 13, 2009
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Personally in my own experience I have never received any good advice from a broker that I could not look up myself on the internet. Financial advisors will tell you to top up your TFSA and maximize your RRSPs, this seems to be the same advice they give everyone walking in the door. Has a broker or financial advisor ever gave you any advice other than the obvious that made or saved you money?
 

Carvher

Well-known member
Apr 13, 2010
889
600
93
No, they are basically useless. You can buy the market so easily. You want the sp500, buy XSP (hedged) or XUS (not hedged). Want the Canadian market, buy XIC or XIU. Want to get some tech and buy the NASDAQ 100, buy Zqq which is hedged. If you have a very long horizon and are very lazy then you can get unhedged but I advice getting hedged if possible. Currency fluctuations can fuck you. If I wanted to be a forex trader, I would do so but I want to invest in companies and not want to worry about forex. Having said that, lets sa y we don't vote in the camp councillor again and we actually get a Pm who cares about the economy and the Canadian dollar shoots up to 90 cents, then sell your hedged etf's and buy the unhedged equivalent
 

yomero5

Well-known member
Jan 12, 2017
1,982
487
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No. The ones that I used to use, from the big banks, are glorified mutual funds salesmen. They will just help you create a balanced portfolio, while collecting the fees, which you have no idea how much because it never appears on the annual statement.
 

anonemouse

Well-known member
Aug 23, 2002
907
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Toronto
No. The ones that I used to use, from the big banks, are glorified mutual funds salesmen. They will just help you create a balanced portfolio, while collecting the fees, which you have no idea how much because it never appears on the annual statement.
This is very true. Once they brought in TIPS (Index Participation Units back in like 2000 or so?) it was the beginning of the end of needing someone else's help for your investments.
 

koreanjames

Active member
Oct 4, 2011
832
65
28
No. The ones that I used to use, from the big banks, are glorified mutual funds salesmen. They will just help you create a balanced portfolio, while collecting the fees, which you have no idea how much because it never appears on the annual statement.
these ones are pure garbage. not to mention you are buying their bank branded funds - depending on what you are buying, they are either making/taking half of what you earn annually on an averaged typical good earnings year, and still earning off you on a bad year.
 

Goodoer

Well-known member
Feb 20, 2004
2,751
1,465
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GTA & Thereabouts...
I'd always go the RRSP route as you probably have room, it forces you to save and you get a refund that you can apply against debt, mortgage or reinvest. There are benefits to the TFSA of course...

The Wealthy Barber would tell you to just invest in funds indexed to the market that have low MERs.
 

superstar_88

The Chiseler
Jan 4, 2008
5,277
964
113
Personally in my own experience I have never received any good advice from a broker that I could not look up myself on the internet. Financial advisors will tell you to top up your TFSA and maximize your RRSPs, this seems to be the same advice they give everyone walking in the door. Has a broker or financial advisor ever gave you any advice other than the obvious that made or saved you money?
If that's the advice they give then they're assuming you're a total dummy
 

Goodoer

Well-known member
Feb 20, 2004
2,751
1,465
113
GTA & Thereabouts...
If that's the advice they give then they're assuming you're a total dummy
In essence, that would be really good advice then. Whether it be financial, carpentry or fixing your car, you should not do anything more than what you truly understand.

It would be improper, if not illegal, for a broker to get you to do otherwise.
 

highpark

Member
Jan 20, 2004
582
21
18
Financial planners is my current pet peeve in the world. They are all useless ignorant theives who will at least make u no money or at most rob u blind, all while charging u to do it. Imagine paying someone to rape u or pillage your house. This is what you're doing when u hire a financial planner. My family had our money invested with a guy who worked for one of the banks and we lost about 3 percent a year regardless of how the market was doing. And we paid him a 1 percent commission rain or shine. When my folks died I fired his ass. I read a few books. Follow my favourite companies and own their stocks and I'm doing great. Making minimum 10 points per year. 5 points on dividends and 5 or more on capital gains. If market goes down beautifully. I buy more=more dividend income and a bigger bounce when market recovers. Buy here's the catch. In order to invest successfully u have to be totally non biased about life. if I have a bias or emotional you'll screw yourself. So for many people investing is unsuccessful cause they get scared or they want to follow the next trend or they want to buy companies they "like". So for them I guess they need someone. In that case watch BNN market call for a few years and when u find a consultant on there that u like call him up and see if he'll take u on.
But investing with Joe Blow from the bank is a losers.bet.
 

highpark

Member
Jan 20, 2004
582
21
18
A follow up. If u want a quick investing start. Canadian bank stocks, CNR, solid utilities. When there's a crash and everyone shitting pick up some sp500 index funds, some google and.microsoft. Start with that and stay away from all the speculative shit. Watch lots of Warren Buffett interviews on YouTube.
 

superstar_88

The Chiseler
Jan 4, 2008
5,277
964
113
In essence, that would be really good advice then. Whether it be financial, carpentry or fixing your car, you should not do anything more than what you truly understand.

It would be improper, if not illegal, for a broker to get you to do otherwise.
Not saying that's bad advice but everyone should know that. Reality though is there are some real dummies out there who need the basics. If a financial adviser gave me basic advice I would think he or she's a dummy. Especially in this day and age where information is everywhere.
 
I am amazed why anyone would buy a "dumb" index fund or worse yet those silly riskier ETF's unless you are a very frequent trader and want to sell intraday.

Instead of “dumb” index funds with no stock selection based on individual company outlooks, or similar ETF’s (only make sense for traders, not investors), I suggest managers with long-term track records of outperformance compared to the category they invest in and compared to the risk taken (Alpha vs. Beta in investment terms) – not just raw returns. .

If a stock becomes overvalued, it actually starts to carry more weight in the index. Unfortunately, this is just when astute investors would want to be lowering their portfolios' exposure to that stock.

The silliness of index investing also creates artificially higher values (P/Es) for stocks that index funds are forced to buy just because they are big enough for the index. This is especially true for cap weighted indexes.

Individual stock should be based on an in-depth analysis of financial's, regulatory filings, review of business plan, analysts reports (usually bias on the positive side) and interviews with top executives. Few individual investors have the time or skills to do this vs a good manager with an extensive analyst staff.

A good advisor is monitoring the difference funds and making recommendations based on the client's objectives, risk tolerance and financial assets. I would avoid any advisor that is selling his own company funds or any gimmicks like funds of funds or ETFs.

While more volatile, smaller companies may have favorable opportunities, with less foreign market revenue reliance, potentially not affected negatively as much by currency changes and often more hidden opportunities than the widely followed large companies.

Portfolios should be dynamic and actively managed. Currently, I would reduce allocation to Europe and Japan which have very poor economi outlooks compared to the U.S. (I don't follow Canada to compare).

I would also recommend using a Certified Financial Planner. In the U.S. would also recommend a Registered Investment Advisor which has fiduciary legal lresponsibility to look after the best interest of the client. I don't think you have that in Canada.
 

The "Bone" Ranger

tits lover
Aug 5, 2006
4,229
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Do it yourself!

Personally in my own experience I have never received any good advice from a broker that I could not look up myself on the internet. Financial advisors will tell you to top up your TFSA and maximize your RRSPs, this seems to be the same advice they give everyone walking in the door. Has a broker or financial advisor ever gave you any advice other than the obvious that made or saved you money?
 
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