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Barrons Top 1000 Advisors

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Feb 22, 2010 6:59 pm
Feb 22, 2010 7:01 pm

The way they rank them is complete BS… Though it does make sense that the top 3 are wires…

Feb 22, 2010 7:08 pm

The formula Barron’s uses to rank advisors is proprietary"aka pay to get ranked". It has three major components: assets managed, revenue produced and quality of practice"So assets,production, and no complaints". Investment returns are not a component of the rankings because an advisor’s returns are dictated largely by the risk tolerance of clients. The quality-of-practice component includes an evaluation of each advisor’s regulatory record.

Feb 22, 2010 7:10 pm
chief123:

The way they rank them is complete BS… Though it does make sense that the top 3 are wires…

  In what way?  Probably 1/3 of them have Billions under management, and I think all have more than $150mm or so (depending on state).  Yes, you could argue who should be 1 or 2 or 3.  But the list is probably fairly accurate.  Keep in mind, they only ranked those who applied.  I bet a lot of Indy firms don't even apply (since most of the bigger ones are RIA's now anyway).  The line between "Financial Advisor" and "Asset Manager" is becoming increasingly blurred.   I can tell you, I know two indy firms on the list that are close to my office (two different states), one has $2.3B+ in AUM and 50 employees.  You can't really compare that model to a wirehouse guy with two assistants and $250mm AUM.  I bet the wirehouse guy makes almost as much or more as the CEO/partner of the other firm.   I just think some of these rankings are becoming less and less relevant as the whole model changes.   In response to your 2nd post above - this again shows how the lines are being blurred between channels.  And how do you "evaluate" advisors?  The returns for wirehouse guys can't even be published, and as you said, it all depends on the client.  You can really only "rank" asset managers with published returns for specific strategies.  Even then, the strategies have to be comparable.   I don't think there is any way to subjectively rank advisors.  You can rank objectively by AUM, but why does it matter if Raj Sharma only manages money for multi-millionares/billionaires and institutions, and the guy in Burlington, VT doesn't have any clients over $10mm? (I don't know this, I'm just pontificating)  It's just different worlds.  It's like the guy that was posting on here a while ago.  He manages like $500mm for 50 institutional clients, but averages like 30Bips in revenue.  How does that compare to someone managing 700 individual clients and $350mm AUM for 100 Bips?
Feb 22, 2010 7:17 pm

Hey bond guy… did you make it this year??? I see Ira Walker is on there, but no Shafiroff, now I know the list is crap…

Feb 22, 2010 7:24 pm

[quote=mlgone]

How long before LPL goes IPO?

[/quote] I think it depends on how many more firms they want to swallow and more importantly what they could get in an IPO..... Nothing really to compare them against.(STIFEL RJ Schwab) old AGE probably would have been the similar...   The other problem is a 3 way fight for control..with Hellman & Friedman, LLC, and Texas Pacific Group owning 60%(I assume split equally) and LPL maintaining the other 40%...So if LPL wanted to go public, the other two could stop them, but LPL couldn't stop the two equity firms...
Feb 22, 2010 7:30 pm

Did you see the guy in Clive, Iowa?  $750mm AUM and 3,000 clients.  Yikes.  He must have quite the staff to service that.

  I would take 10% of both those numbers and be happy.
Feb 22, 2010 10:19 pm

[quote=B24]Did you see the guy in Clive, Iowa?  $750mm AUM and 3,000 clients.  Yikes.  He must have quite the staff to service that.

  I would take 10% of both those numbers and be happy.[/quote] There is a guy in chicago who has 4,000 clients and 1.3B... I know he has at least 3 other advisors on the team...plus support staff.
Feb 22, 2010 10:24 pm

[quote=chief123][quote=B24]Did you see the guy in Clive, Iowa?  $750mm AUM and 3,000 clients.  Yikes.  He must have quite the staff to service that.

  I would take 10% of both those numbers and be happy.[/quote] There is a guy in chicago who has 4,000 clients and 1.3B... I know he has at least 3 other advisors on the team...plus support staff.[/quote]   Actually, the guy in my area that has like $2.5B, he has a staff of 50 (like 14 advisors).  He serves all kind of people, especially now that he got acquired by a local bank.
Feb 23, 2010 8:50 pm

. . .and where are those guys who say clients don’t care?

Feb 23, 2010 8:56 pm

Interesting, the top advisor in my state is an independent.  Yep, clients care about big names.

Feb 23, 2010 9:01 pm

Picked another random state - Kansas.  First one after my own.  Guess who the number one advisor in that state is?  You guessed it, independent.

It doesn’t matter the name.  It matters the individual.  There are great advisors at the wires, great advisors at regionals and great advisors who are independent.

Get off of your high horse, you would think that you had a CPA or something.

Feb 23, 2010 9:17 pm

I think Nebraska and Tenn too…

Feb 23, 2010 9:21 pm

They didn’t start Indy clowns.  They needed a name to build their base.

Feb 23, 2010 9:32 pm

First of all Larry Carroll started from scratch, according to the bio.

Second of all, the conversation is a continuation of pbrainy saying that because of what has happened in the last two years, that clients prefer to have a name like Merril or UBS or Wachovia on their statements. 

It is obvious it is not the case with those four advisors. 

Feb 23, 2010 9:34 pm

Gotcha! 

  Just my opinion but name is super important when you start and quickly it gets trumped by reputation. 
Feb 24, 2010 1:46 am

I didn’t see Ed Jones listed…