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boston_level2_candidate Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > farley013 Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > The only minorities I know in the retail > advisory > > business are ones who have a large network of > > minority contacts. Otherwise minorities do not > do > > well with whites. On the flip side, in the > > insitutional sales world there are a lot of > > minorities and women. As a fund manager I > > personally would rather be pitched by an Asian > > woman than a white man, call me crazy. > > > Farley, > > From my experiences, the retail financial advisory > racket is very racist. I’m familiar with this one > guy who sounds very white on the phone while at > UBS in Scottsdale, Arizona. His name was also a > “white-sounding” name, but he was in fact, an > Indian-American (his parents are from India). He > had an appointment with one older, high-networth > white man from some suburb in Phoenix. When the > older, xenophobic white man discovered that the > this man with the “white-sounding” name was an > Indo-American, he called off the meeting by asking > him if he were a born-again Christian, because " > only does business with born-again Christians." > BTW, the Indian guy went by “Kris”, but his full > name on the marketing brochures with UBS’ > letterheads had him as “Krishna”. Mr.Xenophobe > discovered that the “Chris” that he was speaking > with was in fact a “Krishna” and game over. > > Moreover, I’ve never seen a black financial > advisor working at UBS in Phoenix, Scottsdale, > etc. Moreover, I’ve never seen one interview > there as well. > > Within the industry, it’s a known fact that *NO > BLACKS OR OTHER NON-WHITE ETHNIC MINORITIES CAN DO > WELL IN THIS PREJUDICE CULTURE.* might be different in canada but I know of a lot of successful female/minority FA’s My parent’s IA is a average looking chinese guy and he does well for himself.
Used car mechanic or used car salesmen.
Respect.
Interesting thread. It’s funny that people kept saying non whites can’t make it. Generally speaking, it’s not your race or ethnicity but your target group. Where I live, the Indians prefer doing business with Indians, the Italians with Italians and Serbs with Serbs. Those groups make up the majority of the people. A WASP would have a very hard time making it as an FA. Whereas the other side of town they would be successful and the Indians wouldn’t be. That’s life. People flock to their own.
People trust their own for some reason. As if their own cannot make unethical decisions.
Some aren’t even all that well-dressed.
I am a financial advisor for individuals, but I want to draw a distinction between the fee-only guys and the traditional morons at UBS/Merrill
As a fee-only, I work just like your physician, your accountant, and your attorney - I don’t sell products. To accomplish this, I have a degree from at top 20 school, a CFP, a masters in taxation, and now I’m working on my CFA
So yes your generalization is dead-on, but it is only a generalization that doesn’t apply to all of us.
Now here’s the frustration - does the typical client understand the difference? Yes and no.
Btw, your comments about minorities not making it is absurd. I have been in this for 10 years and have seen it run the gamut. I have seen African American males do well. I have seen Chinese, Korean males do well. I have seen gays do well. And I have seen females do well.
I promise you 100% that any minority that failed out of the business failed for othe reasons. It could have been lack of technical skills/credentials, lack of salesmanship, laziness, mismatch in personality, lack of assimiliation (a thick heavy accent).
The ONLY discrimination I have seen, is that against young people.
DISCLOSURE: I am not a white male.
Respect.
If you think about it, minorities and immigrants wouldn’t do well in this industry, but for other reasons than you’d think.
If they came to this country or their parents came to this country with them recently, they are probably the most talented and ambitious people from their own nation, so it’s a biased selection. They probably value education 10x more than the average person.
Just look at Silicon Valley in California for example. It’s packed with Indian and Chinese families where the father moved from overseas to go work at IBM or Google or whatever and now you’ve got some kid who’s been told all his life that he needs to get a perfect SAT score and have a bigger brain the guy next to him.
Why on earth would this entire demographic of overachieving nerds EVER mesh with an industry that is based purely on selling BS to the public?
So no, it’s not because America is racist and doesn’t want to hire 24 year old Japanese boy with a degree who just got out of UC Berkely. It’s that he’s going to go work at NASA, or Lockheed Martin, or Amazon, or work at Deloitte.
I don’t know how many of you are white males who have lived your entire lives in Apple Pie America, and I’m not doing this to defend anyone, but I just thought that should clear the air.
Once went to Wells Fargo to open up a checking account, and some guy asked me if I needed some financial services advice. I said, thanks but I’m all good. He then asked me if I already have an advisor, and if so, whether they’ve been accredited with the “Series 7 charter…”
My reaction to this most ridiculous comment was similar to Christoph Waltz here in Inglorious Basterds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qAVAHI_3ak
If all the above is true, then you, sir, are an exception, rather than the rule.
I was hired as a mutual fund and insurance salesman financial advisor immediately after leaving the Marine Corps. I knew nothing about nothing. I didn’t even know what a mutual fund was, or an expense ratio was. I didn’t know what an IRA was. I didn’t know the difference between a stock, a bond, and an option.
Even when I went to Morgan Stanley, where there were a lot of “sharp” advisors, the focus was on selling and gathering assets–not on any kind of analytical work. I was told by my supervisors that I needed to learn how to sell products, but not necessarily to learn the products themselves. “That’s what wholesalers are for.” My job was to “convince the public that I’m worth 1% per year to them”.
Are there “good” advisors? Certainly. Are there “bad” ones, like me? Absolutely. Unfortunately, the 90% (bad) seem to be ruining it for the 10% (good).
10% good? Wow, you must have a lot of faith in humanity lol.
Statistically, less than 1% are fee-only. That means 99% make some portion of income off product sales. Of the rare truly independent fee-only guys, I have NEVER met or spoken to an advisor who has the CFP, a masters and a CFA. All of us financial advisors know the CFA is the hardest one to get. Every now and then you get an advisor who wimps out after level 1 and then claims that the CFA is pointless because “it’s too academic”. I just snicker at that.
As I started level 1, it became abundantly clear that the CFA is an absolute requirement for analyzing assets and portfolios. The problem is that amongst 1000 retail financial advisors, only 100 have a CFP and out of those, only 1 or 2 has the CFA.
I guess I wanted really badly to be that 1 out of 1000 and I need people like you and S2000 to keep me going!
i absolutely agree!
Financial advisors are so annoying and i honestly don’t want to ever become one, i think i will hate myself having to cold call people and bug people to buy things.
You’ve never met or spoken to me.
For the record–I just met with an advisor yesterday (he was in our office, dropping off his tax stuff). He said, “So I heard you have your CFA. Isn’t that the Certified Financial Advisor?” He’s not a CFP, but his boss is.
i would just stay quiet and walk away…
^ I blame the CFA Institute for not marketing their designation enough. I expected to see a 30 second ad at the Super Bowl.
I’m not sure that has anything to do with it: The reason the public isn’t going to know about the CFA is because the financial advisors (that don’t have it lol) aren’t going to bring it up in conversation! What’s that going to sound like? In fact, just the opposite occurs.
The client asks “do you have any credentials?”
and the advisor, who can’t pass an exam to savehis life, responds “I don’t need a credential because I’ve been doing this for 25 years”
FYI: The client /prospective client has never asked me if I have a CFA. But they have asked me where I went to college or if I have any credentials. However, some people at a business school alumni event asked me if I had a CFA, but they were touring Wall Street that week. Bottomline is that I question whether the public cares enough to find out what the CFA means. The reason you see so many slick financial advisors selling based on their charisma/personality is because that’s what a lot of idiot clients are looking for.
In order to be fair, for most retail financial advisors (whether they be good or bad), the CFA is overkill. It’s extremely academic, and pretty useless to most people. And the clients would be forced to pay for it, even though they receive no benefit from it.
I’m not a CFP. Sometimes I wonder if I would receive any benefit out of it, even if it’s only for the brand recognition. (Suze Orman and Dave Ramsey tell their audience to “make sure your advisor is a CFP.”) However, I wonder about the usefulness of the designation when a guy who IS a CFP comes to us for tax advice. (FYI - I’m a CPA in a tax practice.)
I’ll admit that the advisors that I’ve met who are CFP’s are usually more knowledgeable and professional than those who are not. But still, most of the CFP’s still know very little about most things. They know just enough to get a client to pay a front-end load of 5.75% on eight different mutual funds. And for everything else, you just send them to a “professional”.
And I agree–the puclic doesn’t know what the CFA means. Most advisors don’t know what the CFA means. Hell, even most Level 1 CFA Candidates (myself included) don’t know what the CFA means.
^ Then Jim Rogers hasn’t been doing his job.