Archives for January 2012

You Don’t Know, What You Don’t Know

Hidden Fees! They are all over the place when it comes to investing.

At least once a month, an investor tells me that another advisor offered managed accounts where the one and only portfolio cost would be the advisor’s fee. Often the fee quoted would be somewhere between 1.25% and 2.25%, plus or minus a little bit. That other advisor would say that there are no other costs and that everything else is free or all inclusive and that absolutely no other expenses would apply.

Why did you leave me here all alone?

“Oh where, oh where has the money gone”? That’s what investors trusting their portfolios to MF Global Holdings are singing right now. $1.2 billion in customer funds cannot be found, and no one seems to have any idea what happened to those investment accounts. You might have seen this in the news.

The president of the now bankrupt MF Global, former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, testified at a Congressional Committee Hearing on December 13. In his opening remarks, he said: