Are Wall Street brokerages making a huge mistake in advising the public to leave their money in the stock market? It seems to me that they are leaving themselves open to massive law suits, post y2k. Are they blind? Or have they forgotten what happened to the tobacco companies? And the tobacco companies never advised anyone to start smoking!

-- Earl (earl.shuholm@worldnet.att.net), November 05, 1999

Answers

And have you seen the TV commercials where "a regular bunch of guys" are standing around shooting the breeze ... only instead of talking about chicks, football or cars, they are INSTEAD talking about their stock portfolios, NASDAQ, etc., etc. This is EXACTLY the mentality that set things up for the crash of '29, that EVERYONE can just breeze right in and strike it rich, no muss, no fuss.

Worse than the tobacco companies ever were with their Joe Cool campaign to hook in teenagers!

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), November 05, 1999.

My parents are in their 70's. Dad always let mom handle finances/investments ... and she's done EXTREMELY well for both of them. Dad has ALWAYS been extremely conservative.

I handled some of their investments, but closed out their account last fall. Then advised mom to cash out on her mutual funds in early April - which she did. [Since that time, all of those mutual funds have really fallen.]

Dad ... who never followed this financial stuff ... and is EXTREMELY conservative financially ...NOW wants to re-invest CD's in the stockmarket. He keeps on listening to all of this Bull Market BS ... and want's to chase the market. Fortunately mom ain't gonna let that happen.

It's DISGUSTING to see what's going on. A lot of the "little people" are gonna get hurt.

You're right, Earl. It's just like those tobacco companies.

But none who are truly responsible will get sued. Or if they could be sued, the "little guy" wouldn't end up winning.

That's why they do it. Big, reputable(?) brokerage firms, NASDAQ, NYSE, SEC, CNBC, FED, etc. - IMHO are all "pimps". I've been following the market for some time. The last 6 months has gotten particularly bad. Really disgusting to see what's going on. Lots of "churning". It's like a big Ponzi scheme.

-- Cheryl (Transplant@Oregon.com), November 05, 1999.

The trick is to separate a fool from his money... The real question is which fool has the most money, isn't it?

-- (...@.......), November 05, 1999.

So sue me, file bankruptcy, years in litigation, your paid pennies on the dollar, company begins business in another name, your toast.

-- been there (beenthere@beentheree.xcom), November 05, 1999.

I was a stockbroker for 5 years, going back a few. The reality is this: Brokerage firm comes first, largest institutional clients second, brokers who make the money for the firm third(unless you are sued, then you are on your own), customers last. If the customers don't make money, oh well, find new ones.

The crap they had us push was the junk they didn't want for their own account. New hot issues were only available for the firms best clients, little if any for the little people.

I went through the crash of 1987, never heard any advice for my clients except "buy". Rule of thumb was, don't tell anyone to sell unless you have a recommendation for them to buy something else. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, their bottom line comes way before yours does.

-- been there, done that (bill@tinfoil.com), November 06, 1999.

Cheryl - "It's like a big Ponzi scheme."

"like"?

-- The Original Me (me@me.me), November 06, 1999.

been there,

My (ex)broker came up with a different tactic with my IRA -- recommend selling individual stocks. That way I always had to buy something else in order to stay invested, and it just always happened that he (naturally) had a recommendation. Plus he got the commissions.

-- been (down@that.road), November 06, 1999.

Stockbroker = real estate broker = insurance salesman = car salesman....NOW is always the best time to buy.

-- Charles R. (chuck_roast@trans.net), November 06, 1999.

Brother in law's a broker. Only one I know who lost money in his portfolio last year. By the way, he's a DWGI despite many kids.

-- Dave (aaa@aaa.com), November 06, 1999.