Scary Article

What is a regular investor to do? Money bits:

“You think a brokerage should be a place you go to pay commissions for fair and unbiased advice, right?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“It’s not. It never has been.” He then cited another saying of Buffett’s: “‘Wall Street is a place where whatever can be sold will be sold.’ You are the consumer of their dreck. What they can sell to you, they will sell to you.”

“But they told us—”

“They lied.”

He went on: “You should be disheartened and disappointed. But don’t kid yourself. You’re a naive capitalist. They were never your advisers. Do not for a moment think that a brokerage firm is your friend.”

“So who’s my friend?”

“You don’t have one. This is the market.”

“Okay, that’s Merrill Lynch. What about the others?”

“They’re not your friends,” Soros said patiently.

“What about Chuck Schwab?”

“All brokers move products based on volume and commission,” he said.

Reading this...it's so obviously right...and worrisome. Another, more heartening bit (at least for myself because I feel this way):

“Here’s how to know if you have the makeup to be an investor. How would you handle the following situation? Let’s say you own a Procter & Gamble in your portfolio and the stock price goes down by half. Do you like it better? If it falls in half, do you reinvest dividends? Do you take cash out of savings to buy more? If you have the confidence to do that, then you’re an investor. If you don’t, you’re not an investor, you’re a speculator, and you shouldn’t be in the stock market in the first place.”

It seems like no one talks about the obvious - if you are a "buy and hold" or value investor - you need a long enough time line for success. But young people with a long time line tend to be broke and stupid. Whereas, if you are older and wiser and when you actually have money to invest, the time line no longer exists. Is this only an obvious problem to me.