The ad campaigns appear to have worked: Discount brokers took in 25 percent more assets from full-service advisory firms than they lost over the past two years, Aite said.
But full-service brokers claimed they were winning the war for clients, the financial services consulting and research firm said.
This does not surprise me. The brand-name, white shoe firms have lied about their products, research, solvency, and everything else under the sun, so it makes sense that they like to lie about their relative attractiveness over self-directed investing. Only idiots and trust fund babies (same difference) need a full-service advisor to hold their hands. The rest of us (the vast majority) are better off with index funds and a handful of stocks we know well.
