advisers as fiduciaries

The fiduciary rule for retirement assets issued by the Labor Department goes into effect today, despite intense lobbying against it by the brokerage industry.

The rule requires financial advisers involved with retirement assets–with the notable exception of the 403b pension assets of government workers–to put their clients’ interest ahead of their own in dispensing investment advice.

In essence, this means that the financial adviser will no longer be permitted to recommend high-cost products with poor performance records to clients simply because they pay a high commission or that the broker gets an “educational” weekend for two at a beach resort for doing so.

The conceptual defense (such as it is) for such practices, which are still allowed for non-retirement assets, by the way, is that while the client is still not well off, he’s better off than if he had no advice at all.

No wonder Millennials are willing to take a chance on robo advice.

the British election

The British prime minister, Theresa May, called the election held yesterday with the intention of increasing her party’s four-seat majority in Parliament in advance of the first Brexit talks with the rest of the EU.

With one seat not yet decided, the Conservatives have lost 12 seats instead, according to the Financial Times.

As exit polls came out overnight predicting this unfavorable result, both Asian stocks with interests in the UK and sterling weakened.

Interestingly, as I’m writing this an hour before the US open, both sterling and the FTSE 100 are up slightly.  S&P 500 futures, which had also dipped slightly in Asian trading as the UK news broke, are trading two points higher this morning.

To me as an outsider, it looks like UK citizens are having serious second thoughts about Brexit (politicians in Scotland advocating it’s breaking with the rest of the UK lost, as well).  My point, though, is that except in extreme circumstances–like when Republican opposition torpedoed a proposed economic rescue plan in early 2009 and the S&P dropped 7%–politics make little day-to-day difference to stocks.