“Bad Advice” costs billions.  That was the headline on the front page of USA Today on Tuesday.  Focusing on retirement accounts as a priority, last week the President asked the Department of Labor to fix the problem of bad advice: namely addressing a systematic problem of high-cost and poor performing investments.  Legislation requiring that all financial professionals be held to the fiduciary standard has been a topic of discussion for years.  Fiduciaries are required to fully disclose all fees, and must always put the interest of clients ahead of their own.  Big firms and insurance companies are now scrambling to protect their interests in the face of having to provide fully transparent costs and improved performance.

Not me.  I already am a fiduciary.  Registered Investment Advisory Firms (RIA’s) are already held to this standard.  When I add a stock to the Pawleys strategies, I do so with one thing in mind: delivering positive performance outcomes for my investors.  Anyone who participates as an investor directly with my company or via the new HedgeCoVest platform pays a flat fee.  All trading commissions are disclosed in advance, and are not collected by my company or HedgeCovest, thus eliminating any conflict of interest or possibility of churning (excessive trading by brokers to generate commissions to line their own pockets).

I am proud to be a RIA and to also be part of a platform that fully discloses fees.  Obama and the DOL should take a look at the RIA model and the new HedgeCoVest platform as an example of the type of transparency that all investors should experience.

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