So, you have decided to become a financial advisor for an average earning of $122,500? Wow, that’s actually higher than my salary, despite the fact that I think I know more or at least as much about investing than all of the advisors that I have met so far from various big banks and brokerage houses (read my experiences here).
How about going even one step further and become an investment advisor to officially manage other people’s money for fee? Well, look no further, I have got it all planned out, except I don’t have any potential clients. Here is a direct route plan to become a small independent money manager in the fastest timeframe:
- Get your NASD series 65 license & register as an investment advisor in your state. This will probably cost you one to two thousand dollars, and some annual renewal fees of several hundred dollars.
- Now you are qualified to open a master account at ScottradeAdvisor. With this platform from Scottrade, you can essentially open up a money management firm of your own, with very little back-office support. The master account allows you to have unlimited client accounts. You can set up various rules for distribution of bought shares into your client accounts, and in a single master trade order, you can buy or sell from all of your client accounts. Every client accounts are subjected to the same Scottrade commission and fee structure. You can set up your management fee automatic deduction with Scottrade, with your client permission. Your clients will own their accounts directly, while giving you the trading authorization and fee deduction authorization. Since they are the direct Scottrade account holders, this will solve the biggest client trust problem when they give you money for management. Their accounts will receive the full SIPC insurance coverage up to $500,000. Plus that you and your clients will enjoy one of the lowest trading commission of $7 offered by Scottrade. I have personally contacted Ameritrade, ETrade, and TDWaterhouse, and none of them has similiar platform like Scottrade’s. I know that Charles Schwab has similar service to Scottrade’s, but the trade commission is higher, and they only seem to offer the platform to very big money management firms.
- Well, that’s it. You just need to have some marketing plan, and find your clients now. After that, it’s all about your money management performance, and you will have a very scalable business that can potentially bring you millions of income every year.
Want to be my first clients? My base fee is only 1%, and I don’t have a minimum opening amount (which is usually north of $100K). I’m also doing very well, returning about 37% since April 1st of 2005, and returning about 16% since Jan 1st of 2006. And I didn’t get this performance from a single stock portfolio, but rather diversified among some 60 stocks, most of which has a total return from 35% to 110%. I will be posting the “brochure” on my website for my own investment firm pretty soon….
