Can you imagine a world where your investment advisor could tell you pretty much anything and get away with it? Believe it or not, that was the world investors lived in just a couple of decades ago. In the early days of the stock market, industry membership organizations worked to self-regulate the behavior of brokers, but there simply wasn’t enough oversight. With so much in the hands of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), big issues began to fall through the cracks. In fact, the SEC conceded that its lack of oversight was partly to blame for the 2008 financial crisis. In a September 2008 statement to ... (full story)