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Why is it easier, in most states, to become a broker or an investment adviser than a hairdresser or electrician?

According to a survey  co-directed by Patrick Lach, a finance professor at Eastern Illinois University and a registered investment adviser, along with marketing professor Leisa Flynn and finance professor G. Wayne Kelly of the University of Southern Mississippi:

In most states, the minimum level of education needed to become a broker or an investment adviser is lower than the education requirement needed to become a hairdresser or an electrician. Electricians are required to complete several years of apprenticeship work under the supervision of a licensed electrician while brokers and investment advisers face no such requirement. Most states do not require a high school diploma or a Graduate Equivalency Degree (GED) to become a broker or an investment adviser. No minimum education requirement exists to qualify to sit for the Series 7 or Series 65 exams [regulatory qualifying tests to be eligible to sell securities]…many people who work one-on-one with clients do not attain education beyond this level.

Nearly a sixth of the survey participants work or used to work in the investment business — but, says Mr. Lach, it is “alarming” that they were wrong nearly as often as the general public about which financial professionals have a fiduciary duty. The difference between the general public and a broker in answering those questions correctly was tiny and statistically insignificant.

This is why I suggest to my readers to fire their broker and that they can actually beat the market with just a little bit of effort and following the strategy that I lay out in The Confident Investor, my book on investing. You can purchase my book wherever books are sold such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Books A Million. It is available in e-book formats for Nook, Kindle, and iPad.

Source: How Come It’s Still Harder to Become a Hairdresser than a Financial Adviser? – MoneyBeat – WSJ

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Apple [stckqut]AAPL[/stckqut], the totemic icon of high-tech’s promise of eternal growth, reports its first revenue decline in 13 years. The Eurozone is back from the brink. The U.S. economy may not be.

And let’s not forget the dollar, which just finished its worst week against the yen since 2008. Or the Dow Jones industrial average, which turned in its worst performance since “the February freakout,” as CNNMoney artfully put it.

Optimists like Gavyn Davies acknowledge that the world economy is underperforming its long-term average for the third year running, but Davies wrote in the Financial Times on Sunday, “Global growth is somewhat better, especially in the emerging economies.” He headlined his blog, “Fading risks of global recession.”

And Robert Shiller, a Yale economics professor, says what you and I think matters. “Recessions aren’t caused merely by concrete changes in the markets,” Shiller argued in The New York Times on Sunday. “Beliefs and stories passed on by thousands of individuals are important factors, maybe even the main ones, in determining big shifts in the economy.”

Shiller suggests there’s more to economic wisdom than statistics will ever give us. If he’s right, we had better pay attention to what we see and what we hear.

I doubt anyone can say with certainty whether or not we’re in for another global recession. But it seems perfectly certain that it will depend on decisions taken soon.

The global economy has been given all there is to get out of low to negative interest rates, and it’s necessary to stimulate one way or another. Now the moment’s upon us: It’s time to stop talking and take the steps.

Economists, policy planners, and politicians will all have something to say. It’s the last we should worry about most, given that ideological preconceptions have been so prominently on display in Washington, London, Brussels, and nearly everywhere you look.

Source: If Consumers Don’t Open Their Wallets, We’re In for Another Recession | The Fiscal Times