The Investing Rip-Off How can you tell whether an advisor is conflicted or looking out for your best interests? What questions should you ask when making important investment decisions? How can you select investments that avoid needless expenses and risk? As investors, many of us have put our faith in the financial services industry when it comes to the stewardship of our wealth. Unfortunately, the industry has consistently failed us on this front. The financial…
Buy Stop the Investing Rip-off: How to Avoid Being a Victim and Make More Money at Amazon
This book is an easy read but is packed with valuable information about the motivations and conflicts of many investment advisors sitting across the desk from you in their office or in the coffee shop providing supposedly sage independent advice about your financial future. Many advisory professionals are sincere in their advice practice, but uninformed of the fallacies they spread as gospel, because they were taught a fallacious view on investments by the firm they work for or are one of many advisor addicted to casino style betting financial jargon and fads of the popular financial media. The worse of them are simply trying to maximize the commissions or fees they earn while minimizing the effort to do so in order to live their own financial dreams, and have rationalized themselves into believing they are doing more good than harm, while avoiding any fiduciary duty to you ahead of their own interests.
One of the biggest industry lies Loeper exposes in very straightforward language is that despite regulatory diclosures that the past market performance of any stock, mutual fund, or other investment is not indicative of future performance, a very high percentage of all presentations to investors are essentially trying to tell investors the opposite is true. That the advisor himself, or another money manager they are recommending, supposedly does have a performance track record that foretells of future riches for the investor – a selling point in direct conflict with this required disclosure.
Many examples of this type can be found in this book and it provides the reader with several types of questions they can ask a prospective advisor to help avoid possibly catastrophic pitfalls.
I found this book to be a quick read and very informative.
For those not “in the business” this book does a lot of explaining about the industry and current practices.