Over the last 50 years we have been indoctrinated to hold professional people in high esteem, a job in banking was respected and working as an Financial Investment Adviser meant you understood how to invest money on behalf of your clients. But over the last two years we have seen this stripped away to reveal the truth, they are only human and humans have flaws, plenty of them!

Bankers once renowned and respected for being conservative with other people’s money were no longer conservative. They nearly lost it all. Money in the bank was supposed to be a safe haven, yet it had been completely risked. Searching for ever increasing profits they took risks with our money and never told us. Now they are too conservative, being too scared to lend money to the very businesses that keep our whole economy going. All this whilst having their profits bolstered by an extremely low cost of money (Fed Funds Rate, Bank of England base rate). They are getting the money at practically no cost while lending it out at still pre-crisis rates. You try getting a loan under 4%.  All this while they are starting to pay themselves big bonuses again.

Financial advisers who talked about risk management squarely to not understand risk.  Just before the Financial Crisis struck, record numbers of Newsletter writers, Hot Stock Tipsters, TV Pundits were all still bullish. Even when the crisis struck, if you had called your adviser he would have told you to “stay with your funds”, “do not do anything”, or if you really insisted you wanted to move to safety it is then you find out that you cannot as you are stuck in a fund for a “minimum period” and if you moved out there would be a “penalty”.   How is that managing risk?  Managing risk also should mean you have the ability to move funds quickly with no cost to avoid demolition to your retirement fund.

This exactly happened to my father, he was injured in a horrific workplace accident and had to retire handicapped early. He received a small award from the courts to compensate him for the pain (just enough to live on) .  I took him to see the most respected Financial Advisers in his area. With their fancy offices and rows of Audi’s in the car park, my father was quickly convinced these people would conservatively invest his money, to enable him to live out the rest of his life with less money worries.  He needed to focus on assisting my mother who also has health issues.

BOOM financial crisis.

50% of his original investment has vanished. He could not get out of the contracts and now he needs to hope the markets recover to pre-crisis levels before he even see the amount he invested. This could be 3 to 5 years if he is lucky.  In the meantime he is drawing down this reduced amount just to cover his living expenses, this money he will never get back.

My point here is simple.  Financial advisers in general are experts in selling you funds, pensions and insurance they are not experts at understanding what way the market is heading and if those funds will make you any money at all.  However they are also experts in taking a fixed percentage of your money every year whether you make a profit of not.  So to them the main focus is on how much money they can manage so they see a percentage of that portfolio come into their business as revenue.

Take control.

Now is the time to take control, you are probably visiting this site because you want to take control.  You want to understand.  You want to make the decisions.  This site is dedicated to stock trading, however all the principles you will learn here can be applied to Mutual Funds, ETF, Stock Market Tracker Funds and investments in general.  Wouldn’t you like to know how to evaluate whether the ETF or Mutual Fund your adviser is recommending has any change of making money in the near to medium future.

Who can you ultimately trust with your finances. You and only you.

Register he for completely free membership, only your name and email is required and you will learn how markets work, how to value companies, stocks and how to use fundamental and technical analysis.  You can even ask me or the growing community of like minded people any questions you have.

to your future.

Name: Barry D. Moore

Bio: Certified Technical Analyst (Stock Market Technical Analyst), Full Member of Society of Technical Analysts (STA) Level II CFTe (Certified Financial Technician), independent trader, author, trainer & blogger.