< If you pay an investment adviser huge monthly fees for investment advice and incur losses and opportunity losses on those recommendations, please explain how those trades might fairly be labeled "self-directed"? >
They're self directed if you traded at a Cyber, Interactive Brokers, MB Trading, and other direct access firms and executed your own trades as opposed to having a broker at Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, etc. You, the client, CHOOSE to go long/short based on your decision making. The stock picks that are provided to you (any client) are merely recommendations. We got all kinds of crap in the office every day with picks (Jag Notes, Pristine and more). Did we feel we HAD to follow those picks? Hell no. Any intelligent trader does his/her own due diligence. Did you think trading was an ATM machine?
Now on the topic of paying "advisors". Did you not state you gave advice to clients? Did you do this free of charge? I suspect not since you stated "I advised all of my clients to completely quit day trading stocks in early 2001, which decision my clients repeatedly requested I reconsider, which I said they must accept, QUIT, you'll lose all profits if you continue DT now - which decision cost me a six-figure income". You had a 6 figure income from giving trading advice? Is that correct? And yet you claim you lost $10 million trading? Why would people pay you for advice given your trading record? And did you divulge any trading history to clients? Did you have prior experience as a Wall Street analyst?
I have no clue how your case will turn out. If Berber et. al. did illegal things then they need to pay. But ... I doubt you'll see a penny for your trading losses as you made a conscious choice to put on those trades. And I suspect any competent attorney will make that point. |
