40 Under 40
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I got my “On Wall Street” today. The cover article is "The Top Forty Advisors Under The Age of Forty."
Not a one of them—nada, zilch, bumpkus–were not with a wirehouse.
Yet to read this forum you’d think that working for the big wires is about as dumb an idea as there could be.
You know, guys like me around to help cost money and real advisors don’t need no stinking help.
If you can get hired by a wirehouse, and you don’t wash out–STAY THERE TILL YOU RETIRE OR DIE.
Good point Put. I think the reason for this has to do with the infrastructure. Notwithstanding the “40 Under 40 lists” and such, the majority of people in the industry that are big producers are at wirehouses. It’s not because it is somehow better or worse, but because there simply were not that many independant advisors until the past 5-7 years. And years ago, the independant route, to a large extent, was populated by wirehouse “dropouts.” In addition, wirehouses have the built-in infrastructure, where indies have to build it themselves. I think you will find as time goes on, that this will change (and is changing).
Also keep in mind that most of those "lists" only focus on either indies, pure RIA's, or wirehouse advisors, but not all three.I think you have a fair point, because they all were from wirehouses. But just to play devils advocate I think here are some of the following reasons why they were all from wirehouses.
First of all did you read how they put together the list? "In compiling our list, we asked the reps' companies to identify their advisors, under the age of 40, with the most assets under management. We further separated the individuals' assets from their teams and ranked them accordingly. If two advisors had the same amount of assets we ranked them according to their trailing-12 production numbers, which we have included for the first time" Second, did you notice there is a second list for regionals? That tells me when they made their first list they only called national firms(read "wirehouse"). Then they built a list for regionals(Raymond James, Hilliard Lyons) but only up to 10. So my guess is that indepedents and RIAs weren't even considered. Third, by reading the bios of the people, most started on a team(not the top guy) and inherited the book, or took it over from a relative(dad,grandpa,uncle). Not hard to have $600 mil in assets when someone else built it and gave it to you. Fourth: The clients they are catering to aren't the same clients I am catering to. My typical client has $350-525K, their clients have min $10 mil. But I am in the suburbs of a larger metro area working with "everday" people as opposed to corporate execs.Putsy,
Until the bank will let people deposit "assets under management", "income in my pocket" is the only measurement that really matters. Were independent IRA firms even considered? I will agree that if one's goal is to work solely with HNW individuals, a wirehouse may be a good place to be. However, if one's goal is to make a $5000,000 + income, an insurance company is a much easier place to do it. In my practice, I've always had a lot of Merrill Lynch guys as clients. If we combined the top producers in my office with the top producers with ML locally, we'd get results that are pretty close to this: 12 of the top 15 guys in terms of AUM would be ML brokers 12 of the top 15 guys in terms of income would work in my office...including the top 5The only thing that runs through my head when I read through these lists is how these financial advisor’s clients make all their money. I need to stop splitting my income with people who order me business cards and run my own show.
it’s also called promotion. i highly doubt any of the candidates considered were with indy channels.
same reason my local area "40 under 40" or "most influential under 40" are littered with banks. because the bank actively promotes their people for these spots, others do not.I quote again “<SPAN style=“WORD-SPACING: 0px; FONT: 12px/18px Arial; TEXT-INDENT: 0px; WHITE-SPACE: normal; LETTER-SPACING: normal; BORDER-COLLAPSE: separate; TEXT-ALIGN: left; TEXT-TRANS: none; orphans: 2; widows: 2; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0” =“Apple-style-span”>In compiling our list, we asked the reps’ companies to identify their advisors, under the age of 40, with the most assets under management. We further separated the individuals’ assets from their teams and ranked them accordingly. If two advisors had the same amount of assets we ranked them according to their trailing-12 production numbers, which we have included for the first time”
Then they called regionals to get a partial list(top 10).. There was no effort to qualify independents, banks(non wirehouse) or anyone else.. It is simply a wirehouse ranking.On Wall Street is a magazine that covers the BD space.
When my group left Wachovia, I asked them if they would write their little ‘note’ providing notice of our departure in their magazine. They said that they don’t cover RIA firms.
So… there you have it. They didn’t consider RIAs in their assessment.
C
…Merrill Lynch…Merrill Lynch…Merrill Lynch…Merrill Lynch…
I believe I may be starting to pick up some sort of a pattern.