Despite the overcast skies in San Diego Thursday, the future looks bright for the 3,000-plus advisors in town for TD Ameritrade Institutional’s annual meeting.

The “steady movement” of investors and advisors to the independent side “sees no sign of slowing,” said Tom Nally, president of the RIA custody unit at today’s opening session.

Over the last five years, asset growth in the independent side, including hybrid advisors, has beat the wirehouse side by a factor of two to one, he said.

TD Ameritrade’s RIA Sentiment Survey, which surveyed advisors in the fourth quarter of 2014, shows that half of RIAs’ new clients are dissatisfied full-service brokerage customers.

“In four short years, independents will overtake wirehouses and become the market share leaders,” Nally said.

But can that trend continue if there aren’t enough advisors?

“We don’t have enough young people entering the field to meet the demand from consumers,” Nally said.

The advisory industry is growing at double the rate of other occupations, yet fewer than 6% of advisors are under the age of 30, he said.When Nally asked the under-age-30 advisors at the session Thursday to stand, only a handful rose.

TD Ameritrade makes $2 million in financial grants and scholarships to support future advisors, and is introducing two new scholarships focused on diversity. The firm is also providing funds to Texas A&M to help the university build a financial planning program.

Nally also promised that the firm would continue to advocate for RIAs on issues like the fiduciary standard and enhanced RIA exams.

But “there seems to be very limited appetite for these issues” among policymakers, Nally said.

He also said the firm would refocus its practice management efforts to help advisors make “surgical” improvements, rather than overwhelm advisors with major programs and fat white papers.

The firm is promoting several technology upgrades at its conference this year.

One new tool, called Veo One (the logo of which adorns attendees’ room keys), offers a one-stop personalized log-in, with access to five technology programs that integrate with TD’s Veo system and more will be added later this year. Veo One has been in pilot stage since late last year.

Additionally, the firm is rolling out a revamp of its client website, AdvisorClient.com, which is used by clients of its RIAs. The client site has an improved look and offers more customization capabilities, TD Ameritrade said.

Although the firm’s RIA sentiment survey found advisors a bit more pessimistic on the markets than last year (17 percent were negative -- three times as many as a year ago), Fred Tomczyk, chief executive of TD Ameritrade Holding Corp., gave advisors some reassurance that things are not too gloomy.

The U.S. economy is doing relatively well, he told advisors at the opening session, with growth and unemployment levels improving.

“Where else would you want to invest?” he asked.

But he offered a note of caution: After a six-year bull market, customers of TD’s retail business “remain extremely bullish [and] we’ve never had seven [up] years in a row.”

Tomczyk expects the markets could get “bumpy” as the Federal Reserve moves to raise rates.

When will that happen?

“It’s not going to be in June, despite what the economists say,” he said.

The Federal Reserve will probably delay a rate rise, erring on the side of caution before bumping up the federal funds rate to 25 to 50 basis points, Tomczyk said.

Central bank officials want to avoid a difficult-to-deal-with deflationary scenario, he said.