The Advisor's Alpha

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For as long as the financial services industry has been around, investors have asked their "broker/advisor/pick a title" what they pay them for. If you have a broker, then you are paying that person to balance the interests of their parent company, their personal interests, and your interests. Ie: Not an advisor and NOT a fiduciary!

Regarding advisors, there's good, bad, and ugly. If an "advisor" is simply recommending funds, then they are probably chasing returns, are focused on the wrong things, and likely don't understand the value of their position. This was commonly seen in the past, and unfortunately a lot of it still lingers.

As a result of the commonly asked question about what an advisor is paid for, the good people at Vanguard asked a very simple question. "Does a Financial Advisor cost investors money or do they add value?" Vanguard did some mathematical nerdery and found that a GOOD Financial Advisor adds a substantial amount of value! Below are a couple of links to the reports that discusses their findings.

The Short Version

https://advisors.vanguard.com/iwe/pdf/FASQAAAB.pdf

The Long Version

https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/ISGAA.pdf