Is there a kind of financial advisor for stock investors? How to find a good one?
I'm a retired stockbroker/Registered Investment Advisor. My initial discussions with prospects never had a fee.  Restricted stock is unsaleable without specific permission from the issuing company, and typically involves time specifc periods when stock can be sold and/or amounts of stock that can be sold. Not for DIY. Financial planners may be able to assist you, if they are conversant in restricted stock, though that's not a common situation for most clients. Any stockbroker at a major firm (Merrill Lynch, UBS, Royal Bank of Canada, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, etc.) will be knowledgeable and advise you (w/o charge) how to trade the stock. Always talk to more than one firm, and don't be in a hurry. If you feel comfortable with the discussion, you can pursue a deeper relationship. In my professional experience, clients valued service, accessibility, knowledge. Price was way down on the list; many of my clients were not wealthy people- they just needed help navigating a very confusing (and necessary) part of their lives. Good luck.
"You want a fee-only advisor.  He charges like an architect or plumber: by the hour or some other ""flat fee"". That is his only compensation. He is not paid on commission at all.  He is not affiliated with any financial services company of any kind.   His office is Starbucks.  He does not have a well lit office like the commission broker down the street.  He does not want you to hand him your money - it stays in the brokerage account of your choice (within reason - some brokerage accounts are terrible and he'll tell you to get out of those).  He never asks for the password to your brokerage account.  Edit: The UK recently outlawed commission brokers.  These guys were competitive ""sales types"" who thrive on commissions, and probably went into other sales jobs.  So right now, everyone is clamoring for the few proper financial advisors available.  High demand is making them expensive.  It may not be cost-effective to hire an advisor; you may need to learn it yourself.  It's not that hard.  Ever hear of a plumber who works totally for free, and makes his money selling you wildly overpriced pipe?  That's what regular ""financial advisors"" are.   They sell products that are deliberately made unnecessarily complex. The purpose is first, to conceal sales commissions and high internal fees; and second to confuse you, so the financial world feels so daunting that you feel like you need their help just to navigate it.   They're trying to fry your brain so you'l just give up and trust them.   Products like whole life and variable annuities are only the poster children for how awful all of their financial products are.  These products exist to fleece the consumer without quite breaking the law.  Of course, everyone goes to see them because they have well lit offices in every town, and they're free and easy to deal with. Don't feel like you need to know everything about finance to invest.  You don't need to understand every complex financial product that the brokerage houses bave dreamed up: they are designed to conceal and confuse, as I discuss above, and you don't want them.  The core of it is fairly simple, and that's all you really need to know.   Look at any smaller university and how they manage their endowments. If whole life, annuities and those complex financial ""products"" actually worked, university endowments would be full of them.   But they're not!  Endowments are generally made of investments you can understand.  Partly because university boards are made of investment bankers who invented those products, and know what a ripoff they are.   Some people refuse to learn anything.  They are done with college and refuse to learn anything more.   I hope that's not you.   Because you should learn the workings of everything you're investing in.    If you don't understand it, don't buy itl  And a fee-only financial advisor won't ask you to.  1000 well-heeled, well-advised university endowments seek the most successful products on the market... And end up choosing products you can understand.  That's good news for you." I had the same problem and was looking for a software that would give me easy access to historical financial statements of a company, preferably in a chart. So that I could easily compare earnings per share or other data between competitors. Have a look at Stockdance this might be what you are looking for.  Reuters Terminal is way out of my league (price and complexity) and Yahoo and Google Finance just don't offer the features I want, especially on financials. Stockdance offers a sort of stock selection check list on which you can define your own criterion’s. Hence it makes no investment suggestions but let's you implement your own investing strategy. "I don't know really is the best investment strategy. People think that they have to know everything to make money. But realistically, out of the hundreds of thousands of publicly traded securities, you really can only invest in a tiny number of them. Of the course of a week, you literally have more than a million ""buy"" or ""don't buy"" decisions, because the prices of those securities fluctuate every day.  Simply due to the fact that there are so many securities, you cannot know what everything is going to do. You have to say ""I don't know"". Also, when you do understand something, it is usually fairly priced. So will you make money on it? ""I don't know"". Only very rarely will you find something that you actually understand well and it is significantly undervalued. You can be looking at a company a day for two years before you find it. But people get trigger happy. They bet on 51%/49% odds when they should only bet on 90%/10% odds or higher.  If you are forced to bet on everything, it makes sense that you bet on everything you believe is greater than 50% chance of winning. But since you cannot bet on everything, you should only bet on the highest quality bets, those with greater than 90% chance of winning. To find such a bet, you may have to shuffle through 100 different companies and only make 2-3 bets. You are looking for something that is at least 2 standard deviations away from the mean.  People are not good at doing a lot of work, most of which yields nothing, to find one big payoff. They are wired to only look at the present, so they take the best bet they can see at the moment, which is often barely above 50% (and with any misjudgment, it may actually be well below 50%). And people are not good at understanding compound/geometric growth. You can keep multipling 10% gains (1.10 * 1.10 * 1.10 ...), but that can all be wiped out by multiplying by one zero, which is why taking a 51%/49% bet is so dangerous (even though technically it is an advantageous one). They forget to adjust for the geometric aspect of compounding. A 99%/1% bet is one you should take, but if you are allowed to repeat it and you keep going all-in, you will eventually lose and have $0, which is the same as if you took a single all-in bet that has 0% chance of winning.  As Buffett says, if you are only allowed to make 20 investments over a lifetime, you will most likely do better because it prevents you from making many of these mistakes." "Most financial ""advisors"" are actually financial-product salesmen.  Their job is to sweet-talk you into parting with as much money as possible - either in management fees, or in commissions (kickbacks) on high-fee investment products** (which come from fees charged to you, inside the investment.)  This is a scrappy, cutthroat business for the salesmen themselves.  Realistically that is how they feed their family, and I empathize, but I can't afford to buy their product.  I wish they would sell something else. These people prey on people's financial lack of knowledge.  For instance, you put too much importance on ""returns"".  Why?  because the salesman told you that's important.  It's not.  The market goes up and down, that's normal.  The question is how much of your investment is being consumed by fees.  How do you tell that (and generally if you're invested well)?  You compare your money's performance to an index that's relevant to you.  You've heard of  the S&P 500, that's an index, relevant to US investors.  Take 2015. The S&P 500 was $2058.20 on January 2, 2015.  It was $2043.94 on December 31, 2015.  So it was flat;  it dropped 0.7%. If your US investments dropped 0.7%, you broke even.  If you made less, that was lost to the expenses within the investment, or the investment performing worse than the S&P 500 index.  I lost 0.8% in 2015, the extra 0.1% being expenses of the investment. Try 2013: S&P 500 was $1402.43 on December 28, 2012 and $1841.10 on Dec. 27, 2013. That's 31.2% growth.  That's amazing, but it also means 31.2% is holding even with the market.  If your salesman proudly announced that you made 18%... problem! All this to say: when you say the investments performed ""poorly"", don't go by absolute numbers. Find a suitable index and compare to the index.  A lot of markets were down in 2015-16, and that is not your investment's fault.  You want to know if were down compared to your index.   Because that reflects either a lousy funds manager, or high fees.   This may leave you wondering ""where can I invest that is safe and has sensible fees?  I don't know your market, but here we have ""discount brokers"" which allow self-selection of investments, charge no custodial fees, and simply charge by the trade (commonly $10).  Many mutual funds and ETFs are ""index funds"" with very low annual fees, 0.20% (1 in 500) or even less.    How do you pick investments? Look at any of numerous books, starting with John Bogle's classic ""Common Sense on Mutual Funds"" book which is the seminal work on the value of keeping fees low.  If you need the cool, confident professional to hand-hold you through the process, a fee-only advisor is a true financial advisor who actually acts in your best interest.  They honestly recommend what's best for you. But beware: many commission-driven salespeople pretend to be fee-only advisors.  The good advisor will be happy to advise investment types, and let you pick the brand (Fidelity vs Vanguard) and buy it in your own discount brokerage account with a password you don't share. Frankly, finance is not that hard.  But it's made hard by impossibly complex products that don't need to exist, and are designed to confuse people to conceal hidden fees.  Avoid those products.  You just don't need them.  Now, you really need to take a harder look at what this investment is. Like I say, they make these things unnecessarily complex specifically to make them confusing, and I am confused.  Although it doesn't seem like much of a question to me.  1.5% a quarter is 6% a year or 60% in 10 years (to ignore compounding). If the market grows 6% a year on average so growth just pays the fees, they will consume 60% of the $220,000, or $132,000.  As far as the $60,000, for that kind of money it's definitely worth talking to a good lawyer because it sounds like they misrepresented something to get your friend to sign up in the first place.  Put some legal pressure on them, that $60k penalty might get a lot smaller.   ** For instance they'll recommend JAMCX, which has a 5.25% buy-in fee (front-end load) and a 1.23% per year fee (expense ratio). Compare to VIMSX with zero load and a 0.20% fee.  That front-end load is kicked back to your broker as commission, so he literally can't recommend VIMSX - there's no commission! His company would, and should, fire him for doing so." Loads of financial advisors advise holding index funds they may advise other things as well, but low fee index funds are a staple portfolio item.  I can't speak to the particulars of Canada, but in the US you would just open a brokerage account (or IRA or SEP IRA in the case of a small business owner) and buy a low cost S&P index ETF or low/no fee/commission S&P index mutual fund.  There's no magic to it.   Some examples in no particular order are, Vanguard's VOO, Schwab's SWPPX, and iShares' IVV.  There are also Canadian index equities like Vanguard's VCN and iShare's XIC. What is the best option to start with? and  I am not sure about my goals right now but I do want to have a major retirement account without changing it for a long time That is a loaded question. Your goals should be set up first, else what is stopping you from playing the mega millions lottery to earn the retirement amount instantly. If you have the time and resources, you should try doing it yourself. It helps you learn and at a latter stage if you don't have the time to manage it yourself, you can find an adviser who does it for you. To find a good adviser or find a fund who/which can help you achieve your monetary goals you will need to understand the details, how it works and other stuff, behind it.  When you are thrown terms at your face by somebody, you should be able to join the dots and get a picture for yourself. Many a rich men have lost their money to unscrupulous people i.e. Bernie Madoff. So knowing helps a lot and then you can ask questions or find for yourself to calm yourself i.e. ditch the fund or adviser, when you see red flags. It also makes you not to be too greedy, when somebody paints you a picture of great returns, because then your well oiled mind would start questioning the rationale behind such investments. Have a look at Warren Buffet. He is an investor and you can follow how he does his investing. It is simple but very difficult to follow. Investing through my bank I would prefer to stay away from them, because their main service is banking and not allowing people to trade. I would first compare the services provided by a bank to TD Ameritrade, or any firm providing trading services. The thing is, as you mentioned in the question, you have to go through a specific process of calling him to change your portfolio, which shouldn't be a condition. What might happen is, if he is getting some benefits out of the arrangement(get it clarified in the first place if you intend to go through them), from the side of the fund, he might try to dissuade you from doing so to protect his stream of income. And what if he is on a holiday or you cannot get hold of him. Secondly from your question, it seems you aren't that investing literate. So it is very easy to get you confused by jargon and making you do what he gets the maximum benefit out of it, rather than which benefits you more.  I ain't saying he is doing so but that could be a possibility too, so you have consider that angle too. The pro is that setting up an account through them might be much easier than directly going to a provider. But the best point doing it yourself is, you will learn and there is nothing which tops that. You don't want somebody else managing your money, however knowledgeable they maybe i.e. Anthony Bolton. "Good ones, no there are not.  Go to a bookstore and pick up a copy of ""The Intelligent Investor.""  It was last published in 1972 and is still in print and will teach you everything you need to know.  If you have accounting skills, pick up a copy of ""Security Analysis"" by Benjamin Graham.  The 1943 version was just released again with a 2008 copyright and there is a 1987 version primarily edited by Cottle (I think).  The 1943 book is better if you are comfortable with accounting and the 1987 version is better if you are not comfortable and feel you need more direction. I know recent would seem better, but the fact that there was a heavy demand in 2008 to reprint a 1943 book tells you how good it is.  I think it is in its 13th printing since 2008.  The same is true for the 72 and 87 book.  Please don't use internet tutorials.  If you do want to use Internet tutorials, then please just write me a check now for all your money.  It will save me effort from having to take it from you penny by penny because you followed bad advice and lost money.  Someone has to capture other people's mistakes.  Please go out and make money instead.   Prudence is the mother of all virtues." "Others have mentioned the term fiduciary but haven't really gone in to what that is. Despite the name ""financial advisor"" there is no legal (In the US) mandate as to what that means.  Often times a financial advisor is little more than a sales rep whose job it is to sell particular financial instruments.  These people will give you good generic advice such as ""make sure you have a nest egg"" and ""don't spend more than you make"".  However when the rubber hits the road in terms of how to save they will often recommend/insist/pressure a particular asset/security which doesn't necessarily meet your risk/reward preference/tolerance.  Often times the assets they pitch have high fees.  These people won't charge you for their time because their time is a loss leader for the commissions they make on selling their products. In contrast a fiduciary's job responsibility is to look out for your interests.  They shouldn't receive any kind of payment based on what assets you buy.  This means that you have to pay them for their time. The NAPFA website seems to have good ideas on choosing an advisor. http://www.napfa.org/HowtoFindAnAdvisor.asp" Consistently beating the market by picking stocks is hard. Professional fund managers can't really do it -- and they get paid big bucks to try! You can spend a lot of time researching and picking stocks, and you may find that you do a decent job. I found that, given the amount of money I had invested, even if I beat the market by a couple of points, I could earn more money by picking up some moonlighting gigs instead of spending all that time researching stocks. And I knew the odds were against me beating the market very often. Different people will tell you that they have a sure-fire strategy that gets returns. The thing I wonder is: why are you selling the information to me rather than simply making money by executing on your strategy? If they're promising to beat the market by selling you their strategy, they've probably figured out that they're better off selling subscriptions than putting their own capital on the line. I've found that it is easier to follow an asset allocation strategy. I have a target allocation that gives me fairly broad diversification. Nearly all of it is in ETFs. I rebalance a couple times a year if something is too far off the target. I check my portfolio when I get my quarterly statements. Lastly, I have to echo JohnFx's statement about keeping some of your portfolio in cash. I was almost fully invested going into early 2001 and wished I had more cash to invest when everything tanked -- lesson learned. In early 2003 when the DJIA dropped to around 8000 and everybody I talked to was saying how they had sold off chunks of their 401k in a panic and were staying out of stocks, I was able to push some of my uninvested cash into the market and gained ~25% in about a year. I try to avoid market timing, but when there's obvious panic or euphoria I might under- or over-allocate my cash position, respectively. Start at Investopedia. Get basic clarification on all financial terms and in some cases in detail. But get a book. One recommendation would be Hull. It is a basic book, but quite informative. Likewise you can get loads of material targeted at programmers. Wilmott's Forum is a fine place to find coders as well as finance guys. "Surprising that you have a ""finance background,"" but don't know what a cold-calling broker does - he calls people he's never met and tries to bullshit them into buying stock or making some other trade.  You can call people from contact lists obtained from marketing firms, people who hopefully fit a certain income and age bracket best suited to investing.  For some people it's ok, for others it's complete hell.  If you fall into the latter category, your salary being based on how much trading you generate every month can make it even worse.  If you want an idea of cold-calling, call 100 people today at random from the phonebook and try to convince them that they need to buy something." "Fred is correct ... MOST financial advisors (but not all) are paid either for managing your assets or for selling you financial products. But success at anything, especially building wealth, is all about PROCESS, not products. I applaud your desire to find a financial advisor to help you because this is not something that most people have the education, experience or capacity to do themselves (it is impossible to get the perspective you need to make the best choices). Start with a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER professional - they have an ethical duty to do what is in your best interests ahead of their own (the ""fiduciary standard"").  You might interview two or three.  Work with the one who is transparent about how they are paid and whose process is focused on helping you achieve your goals ... not following any rule of thumb or standard boilerplate.  Your goals are different.  Your financial life is different. Find someone who can help YOU follow YOUR agenda ... not their own." To evaluate any advice, this lists some of the things to consider: There are good advisors out there. There are also Bernie Madoffs who give the entire industry a black eye. In the end, the best path is to educate yourself, read as much as you can before you invest. Better to lose a bit by staying out of the market than to lose it all by getting scammed. For a true financial advisor 'track record' consists of more than just returns.  Is this person helping their client make the right investment choices, savings choices, tax efficient choices, EXPENSE choices?  Is the advisor keeping me honest with myself, helping me make my goals realistic, my investment options realistic, etc.?  Is the advisor helping me stay disciplined?  For example, if an advisor has a good track record in the market, but has the investments in the wrong types of accounts and is losing too much to taxes, he/she is a bad advisor.  If the advisor is not considering the time horizon of the investor, he/she is a bad advisor.  If the advisor is not helping the client understand their true risk tolerance, he/she is a bad advisor.  All of this regardless of their track record.  Edit: You also seem to be talking about wealth managers.  I am talking about financial managers.  I believe very few wealth managers are actually worth their costs (and most are just blow horn prognosticators) whereas financial advisors are financial educators to clients. If your investment returns are the main variable you use to determine if your advisor is doing a good job you are using his or her services incorrectly  Also, if you are using a good advisor, he or she needs to know how your investments are doing, not you.  However, my thoughts are based on the idea that you can't go it alone.  If you are not among the people concerned about the market, waiting for the market to go down 'so you can find a better buying opportunity', or making one of many other novice mistakes, I'm not speaking directly to you with my comments.