Suspicion is Good, When It’s Your Stack.

Beating the truth out of any financial services rep. or sales executive and getting away with it.

“You kinda had to be their officer.  He wouldn’t show me the fee schedule.  Do you know where to find the 12-1b fee in this prospectus?”

Tools aren’t born.  They’re bribed.

 

 

Suspicion                                                    is a tool.  It’s first on our list of fundamentals.  We wield it everyday, in one area or another.  Do it now, and anytime you think about your stack.  Retailers, brokerages, and other professionals and sales people, have tools–human tools.  You have tools–repeated questions fueled by serious accurate layered knowledge.  There is no alternative path around knowledge.

 

Once we have a handle on our information, we can deal with most tools.  Yet, prepare to be targeted and maybe even handled back.  It’s only natural, like rock slides.

 

 

Slinging industrial-strength suspicion is a skill position–like a safety, or a DB.

 

 

How should we juke when the salesman’s maw is plugged?  Narrow your gaze and hit him with a fixed unblinking stare and repeat the goddamn question–clearly.  Look about.  Anyone else see that?  Question dodges are common.  We can call that out, or pay the cost–whatever that totals.  If they aren’t too ashamed to pack-in lurking charges, then drop the pretense of sociability and jerk out the cordless drill.

“Every time you lie or evade I’m removing another screw. ” Move in close, glare at his chair, and give the drill a quick squeeze.  Now whispering you simply have to say “One lie–one screw.  Start lining out the costs and fees, unless you wanna be sitting on the floor.”

 

We all know the best repeated question.  “Where exactly are the fees?”

 

When dealing with equity ideas the questions are directed at you, the potential buyer.  At that point the first and repeated questions is “How can this lose me money?” 

 

We can see right off the worth of hammering this question.  Guess what happens when you repeatedly ask this question?  Pursue it far enough and what end up with is an armload of answers, more questions, both, and unhappy people feeling…uncomfortable.

 

People grow…uneasy when faced by the same vexing question.  What is there to be nervous about if everything’s square?

 

 

This is the face that profit-protecting men prefer when hit with direct, clear, pointed questions, say about maintenance fees or 401K robberies.  This is the “Go ahead.  Ask me another fucking question” stare.  We’ve seen this face.

 

 

O.K. well, fees are fees, and anxiety even behind a desk shines like a toach with a peasant shaking it.  Charges are charges and threats are threats and that’s what nice people know not to do.  Right?  Crap.  Do it.  Because nice is nice and dollars are potentially going over the table and never confuse niceties with business.

 

Never confuse fundamental investing questions with approval.  Forget social pressures to be “nice.”  You’re pursuing answers not friends.  The contact’s over when jawing money and the rep’s answer dispenser’s plugged.

 

 

Fee talk blockage?  Dislodge that plug–perhaps a rabbit-punch to the gut.

 

 

It’s tough–and people do their best to convey important info.  Yet protecting piratical pricing can be embarrassing.  And women are far better then most men at smiling and quoting pricing at the same time.  It’s like farting and smiling simultaneously.  Practice at home or you’ll never pull it off in public.

 

Smiling and quoting pricing at the smae time is much like farting and smiling simultaneously.  Toddlers do it.  Can you?  Know any adult who can?

 

 

Charges and fees and commissions and pricing in general are often defended by play acting.  It’s like a fake form of Really, body-function shame is very close to fee and pricing shame.

 

The lull of the holiday season is a time to regroup.  This magical time of year also provides a lesson in integrity.  Every year we receive advice concerning holiday dilemmas, like what to do when presented by a gift you don’t like.  What’s the advice?  Lie.  And then lie some more.  With smiley beaming advice like that who needs wild fire?

 

 

 

Keep that anklet in the bag until you’re in the store to discretely return it.  Wrong is wrong.

 

 

Who needs global warming when you have friends or family so flimsy they can’t face gifting facts?  People hate “yes men” because they have no integrity.  Wanna join them?

 

 

Dumbass advice like that will get you one thing in the end.  A bucket of muck.  You want to forfeit your integrity because someone might get upset?  How many white lies have you seen breakdown?  Right–the majority, eventually.  Guess what?  At that point no choice exists.  you’re dealing with someone who believes in lying to people.  How the hell are you ever supposed to know–for sure–when they’re telling the truth?

 

 

Remember the Boy Who Cried Wolf?  Nobody believed the little bastard anymore because they knew he was a liar.  At that point even rock-solid truth means nothing.  Real moral of the story?  If integrity is lost, there is no way back.

 

 

Jabbering on honestly about how thoughtful, kind,the gifting is, while secreting away the fact you hate it.  After that we’re told to continue the charade through the year by strategically using/positioning said gift to be seen by the giver–as though you love it.  Hockey puck.  Tell the truth, and wed out the weak.

 

 

Tools aren’t born.  They’re created by the repeated application of pressure.  They’re baked much like victims on Dr. Moreau’s island of genetic tinkering–somewhere out in the Caribbean.  Money loves the Caribbean.  So do we.

 

The Bottom Line.

Fees are the lifeblood of the financial industry.  Retail employs tools to ease clients over the threshold and on to the howling Fee Train.  Talking with tools is not always possible while remaining purely within the perforated lines of social niceties.  Such niceties are often expertly used to deflect, dissuade, and derail.  When that happens, you’re clearly Talking to a Tool.

Thanks for reading.  Keep looking.

 

StockJaw

Execute, don’t scramble.

StockJaw.com

 

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Additional resources:

Investopedia.com.  Seriously Wonderful.  Fact.

http://www.investopedia.com/

Charles Schwab.  In Our Opinion, the best broker going.

https://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/client_home

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