Who can you Trust?

With the lack of confidence in the stock market compounded by the fallout of Bernard Madoff and others, individual investors, especially older ones, are scared and are not looking at returning to the stock market anytime soon but they must if they want to keep purchasing power ahead of inflation.

What can be done to raise the trust level and the confidence of the individual investor? There is much discussion about this on capital hill and regulatory reform will come but will it be the right approach? Can future regulations catch the Bernie Madoff's of the world and prevent another global meltdown of the economic markets?

Why cannot individual investors have the same rules in place as they do through their retirement programs? The key here is the advisor for these retirement programs must be a "fiduciary" where the client's interest come first before the adviser's. This seems pretty clear and easy to implement but lobbyist for the big brokerage houses don't want rules put in place that will keep them from promoting toxic investments that put their clients at risk but put substantial quantities of money in their pockets.

Here is a link to an article by Bob Veres in the most recent Financial Planning magazine about what is happening in the regulatory world and what you can do.

Anyone can be an investment advisor and hang their shingle out with limited regulations. If you are in the market for someone to help you with your investments, if there is anything left, then search out a firm that is a registered investment advisor (must follow the "fiduciary standard") and the individual investment advisor holds the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER tm designation with the fiduciary and ethical standard that follow.

To find out more about the CFP tm ethical standards there is a link under the Link section of this blog's home page (right side) entitled "CFP Board's Ethical Standards ....." that when clicked will play a video through YouTube.

Trust and confident must be regained and the firm that is a "fiduciary" with the highest ethical standards can make this possible.