We will all be ruined says Hanrahan.

We will all be ruined says Hanrahan

Don't mean to blacken all advisors. In fact, my knowledge of them is very limited and I may be confusing them with salespersons for financial institutions. I nevertheless maintain a healthy scepticism about their products.

By the way, excellent web site Tommy - worth visiting and very informative.

Slim

Re: We will all be ruined says Hanrahan

Fair enough - in my opinion there is a world of difference between a company sales person/representative and an "official" advisor (whether they be an AA or an RIAPI or whatever). The former will definitely not provide independent objective advice but will merely try to sell products provided by the relevant institution. In contrast, at least with an AA/RIAPI or whatver you have some chance of good advice!

Get In, Invest Regularly, Be Patient, Watch those Fees.

>have fallen for all the hype about equities being the
>strongest performer over time. That may be true but >things have changed. Can any of us afford to wait to >reap the benefits of the upswing?

Not sure things have changed. The very fact that
we are in a slump shows that we are in a cycle.
Remember there were those who claimed that things
HAD changed and equity growth would go on forever. New Economy and all that nonsense.

There are trends in equities that go back 80 years that
show that over time, steadily and patiently investing
you will do well.

I do agree that the fees that institutions put between
you and your portfolio are shameful, particularly in
this country.

I talked in another post about how even the exchange
rate spread that brokers apply could easily cause you
to lose as much as 9 or 10 thousand over your
investing career. That's before you look at fees and
commissions.

Find a cheep way to get in the market, invest
regularly, be patient. It'll work out.

For the record I am not in the Financial Industry.

-Rd

Wild Comments

Slim said 'Don't mean to blacken all advisors. In fact, my knowledge of them is very limited ......... I nevertheless maintain a healthy scepticism about their products.'

I thought it was the moderators job to delete comments like this. A misleading statement based on nothing.

Re: Wild Comments

Slim is merely expressing a personal opinion which has since been challenged. I don't think that deletion is necessary in this case.

Re: Wild Comments

Williams, if you have a problem with Slim's cotribution, why not rebut any point you have a problem with?

Wild Comments

Williams

I was just honestly reconsidering my earlier statement in the light of subsequent points made by others. Independent FAs are a relatively new species and my experience is mainly of so called advisors who are actually reps/brokers. If that was my sole point in my posts you would be correct that it was worthless, but I think it was a small part of the overall.

Slim

and

it appears to be a big boat we all set sail on.
I too caught a cold, but also scored a goal or two.
free first active cash but (unfortunately?) had cleared loan prematurely otherewise would have received double.
took out a small irish life tracker in 1995 based on a number of indices and cashed in in 1998 at 66% up.
was advised by irish life to hold on until the full 5.5 years were up but could not see the point as 1/5 if policy was in japan and another 20% of 1/5 was in smurfitt.

taking a bath on eircom but can wait and vodaphone just might come back. but downside is sterling has fallen. talk about winning and losing.


Invested £4000 (punts) in a 10 year scottish provident with profits policy in 1992. matured in 2002 at €12000+ and unbelievably received £4000 sterling from scottish provident upon demutualising and put it into a loan note in london to avoid tax ( legal). There's that sterling again!
invested £5000 punts in scottish provident in 1997 and was informed this year that they were cancelling the policy as it was a dud(my words)and received €5,500 back. talk about ups and downs.


losing too much in irish life scope at present but maybe some day.

finally .At least resisted all temptation and went for an post at 4% fixed ssia.

back to advice. i regret not playing my own hunches over the years. for instance at present Jurys hotel only about 1/2 previous high, maybe in couple of years will recover. who knows? but I bet my hunches would be as good as any overpriced and pompous adviser.

anyway whats the point of worrying, teenagers have it right. enjoy life and just go with the flow.

re Hanrahan

Hi Hanrahan,

It annoys me when people blame advisors for decisions which they made which subsequently lose them money.

SSIAs were a great investment and anybody who told you to bundle in as much as you could was giving you great advice. The fact that the markets went south subseqently is unfortunate but not their fault.

Eircom was a great investment and anybody who advised people to get into the stock was giving great advice. I am not suggesting we rehash what is a very old debate which has already been sufficiently aired on AAM, but many people seeem to forget that Eircom shares shot up in value after the flotation. There is only one measure to the value of a company and the price of a share - supply and demand. If a share price plummets immediately after a flotation then it is reasonable to deduce that the offer price was too high. If its soars then it is reasonable to deduce that the offer price was at a discount to the value. Eircom's soared and I was one of those people who made a 25% return on the maximum investment in a matter of days.

If an advisors could call the market they wouldn't be spending their time advising you on where to put that 10k lump sum. Getting advice does not abrogate your responsibility for your decisions.

That said I'm sorry you investment experience was not more fortunate.

regards,

Rockfalke

Re: re Hanrahan

Notwithstanding the fact that there have been obvious cases of misselling, arguably misleading advertising (e.g. those convoluted tracker bond and deposit/tracker bond products) and that people have to be on their guard about being pressurised/rushed into inappropriate investment decisions, I have to agree with you on the point about people ultimately needing to take responsibility for their own decisions - something that I mentioned and . Unfortunately, it seems that we still have a long way to go before people are interested, motivated and informed enough to systematically review their financial situation, investment goals/timeframe, attitude to risk/volatility, overall "portfolio" etc. for themselves and to understand the financial products available to them, and in particular the risk/potential rewards tradeoffs involved, before buying into them. In fact many (most?) people will never fall into this category regardless of how much information is made available to them as evidenced, for example, by the reaction of some people that charges disclosure information is a burden rather than a help to them, the repetition of queries along the lines of "I have €x - what is the best product" here on AAM, and so on. As such, many people will continue to rely on third parties for savings/investment advice (hopefully objective and independent and not their friendly local bank teller or other tied agent or whatever) but they need to understand that once they sign on the dotted line it is they who have made the decision and that there is no point in blaming somebody else if/when things don't turn out as expected (something I know only too well myself! :\ ).

pity I didnt take my own advice. Jurys is up just over 20% since I posted. Maybe thats why I am not an advisor. They couldn't pick their nose.