Stock Broker Advisers

                    

SEC regulations see that stock brokers have to treat clients differently than in the past. Of course it doesn’t do much for most investment portfolios, but it makes bureaucrats feel better.

                       

In the old days a broker had to be sure that an investment was ”suitable” for a client. What was suitable was often debatable, but that makes securities markets as erratic as they are.

                       

Now the broker is supposed to have a “fiduciary duty” toward the client. That should open a hornet’s nest of endless legal problems

                       

The main result of this is to give investors more ammunition to sue brokers for real or imagined damages. That offers more power to the lawyers. And to give brokers the excuse to become more profitable “advisers.”(See the Earl J. Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole at Twitter.)