Stockbrokers do not have a fiduciary responsibility toward their clients. Any time they try to sell you something, you can be sure it’s against your interests, almost by definition. If it happens to work for you, it’s an accident.
Different story with many types of fee-based financial planners.
I thought he was a pretty bright guy but at Merrill buying the crap they were selling? Not very bright. Stan O’Neil turned it into a mortgage bucket shop at the time.
ML has been nothing but a bunch of crooks stem to stern for decades; selling proprietary toxic crap to unsuspecting marks has been their standard modus operandi forever. Like clock work, at least once every decade you could count of ML being caught in some kind of major scandal where they were screwing their customers to the tune of billions of dollars.
I consider anyone selling me something that will put money in their pocket as having a conflict of interest. In fact, I don’t know that it is even possible to get truly objective financial investment advice. The “Family CFO” concept comes as close as anything I have found.
When it comes to Merrill Lynch/BOA I have to bite my tongue.