At our Inside Retirement conference in mid-May, Nick Murray addressed what he perceived as a melancholy mood pervasive in the advisor community. As someone who has spent 50 years in the financial advice business, he certainly has the sense of perspective to discern mood swings.

What is driving this feeling of the blues? Murray identified two major factors: the DOL fiduciary rule and the advent of robo advisors.
For client-centric advisors, accepting fiduciary responsibility should be a given. Had the rule not permitted disputes to be resolved via class action lawsuits, it’s likely that most of the biggest players in the brokerage world would have accepted it.

Now under the Trump administration, the rule may be watered down by the SEC. One possible scenario is a reversion to the two-tier playing field with what another speaker at the Dallas event, Jane Bryant Quinn, called real fiduciaries and “fake fiduciaries.” This remains to be seen.

Murray ridiculed the notion that robo-advisors could replace real advisors. They may be able to allocate assets for young people with rollovers too small for most advisors and brokers.

But robots are not going to guide people successfully into retirement. A few weeks ago, a retired money manager I know who holds a CFA asked me if I knew a good CFP-CPA to help him structure retirement withdrawals. The point is, a sharp person with an Ivy League M.B.A. realized this task was out of his league.

Then there is the issue of President Trump. He is America’s first citizen president with no government experience, and it shows. Now the appointment of a special counsel is prompting some advisors to fear another prolonged Watergate-style period of paralysis. But whatever happens, a replay of the 1970s is unlikely. Inflation and unemployment are low and the economy will start running low on workers as baby boomers start retiring.

That’s why many Americans who lost their jobs in the Great Recession are re-entering the workforce, while others are finding, much to their surprise, that they are able to retire. Even for these lucky folks who have reached financial independence, a change in lifestyle makes one uncertain and uneasy.

Any major change in lifestyle, even achievements like graduating from high school, is likely to produce a sense of melancholy, and that may be what’s going on.

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