I am up 4.42% YTD and on track for my worst year since 2008. Not sure that is isolated to me or others are also struggling. I take no solace in the fact my return is higher than many of the market indexes as my goal is to consistently compound my capital and not to shadow or beat any particular market index. I haven't a clue how the rest of the year will unfold. I think China is simply an excuse for an already overall sick market. But as we have seen, at least since 2008, rallies seem to come when the markets have looked the sickest. At my age and financial situation I am in no mood for any drawdown in my total nest egg - even a 1.5% or 2% decline. Then again I was never in the mood for any drawdown, young or old. So all I hold (for the moment) are three very small equity positions in small cap biotech and a bank loan fund. Junk corporates have performed especially poorly lately in part because of the decline in oil prices. On the other hand, junk munis are suddenly looking inviting again.

"I wonder if anyone has done a study of how frequently headlines in the WSJ report dishonesty, fraud, corruption, and other misdeeds"
@BenWP- Actually, to my surprise, the WSJ is pretty good about not only reporting but actually doing the hard background spadework to highlight a fair number of what turn out to be fairly major financial shenanigans. Their front-page staff seems, even under Rupert, to have a pretty long leash.

Followed John Deassauer into CPPokphand. Should have been alert when Dessauer said Angelo Mozillo was a fine man running a fine company (Countrywide Credit). I wonder if anyone has done a study of how frequently headlines in the WSJ report dishonesty, fraud, corruption, and other misdeeds; it seems to me that the financial industry is rife with miscreants. But then again, who I am I to judge?

Don't feel bad John. Wasn't worth linking anyway.
"Significant probability"?
And this one ...
"Whenever you have the money supply rising rapidly, the commodities in those countries seem to be rising in that currency—and as money supply grows, you’re seeing an economic pickup." (Ms Saefong appears to be trying to summarize Holmes' thinking on the matter. I doubt she understands it any better than I do.)
I agree that many EM's are closely tied to commodities. What's the news there?
I disagree with the implication that this commodities market is easily explainable by some kind of super-trend or money supply figures. As far as I can tell, the rapid plunge in oil (50%) and the GSCI (40%) over the past year are unprecedented. Precious metals sometimes behave this way. But most commodities do not fall that rapidly under all but the most dire financial circumstances.
So, John - Be grateful Ted beat you to this one.

@ MJG, @Old Joe: Greatly enjoyed both of your comments, as well as the article. Reminds me of my own "education" as experimentalist >> modeller.
After a 40-year career in which the first half involved looking at the
experimental results of one hard object suddenly encountering another
and the second half trying to model these events in collaboration with
some of the smartest people I have ever been privileged to work with
using the most powerful supercomputers of the moment, one event that
always returns to my mind occurred during an informal break at a
project review when the young administrative assistant to our lab chief
very earnestly asked my boss "Do you modelers ever get the right answer
when you don't already know it in advance????"
Compared with economists, financial analysts, climatologists, etc., we
at least could design & and perform experiments -- controlled and
reproducible, more or less -- and physically and otherwise examine
the results thereof. As for economic and financial theories and forecasts,
I would be inclined to put them one step from witchcraft and mirrors.
Enjoy, but handle with appropriate caution.
(Interestingly, about the time that I was entering this latter phase of my
career, it became increasingly difficult for us to recruit rising math
PhDs because they were all being recruited by Wall St. at much higher pay.
Not sure how many are still there.)

"It’s several orders of magnitude more approximate, and consequently more unreliable, in the investment world given the modeling shortfalls. The introduction of emotionally motivated market participants adds yet another complexity dimension that is not modeled. Good luck on making reliable predictions under these circumstances."
@MJG: I've made similar observations in response to a number of your previous posts, where I felt that undue weight was being given to the alleged precision of such financial modeling. I came very close to making such a response again, but decided that it would likely only start another contentious exchange. I'm a bit surprised to see that we are in agreement on this, at least. The linguistic construction of your comment is particularly succinct and clear: I certainly would not attempt to improve on it.

This is a report of how employees of national firms (such as Edward Jones) like their employer, not how customers like their advisors.
One cannot read the actual study (this is how companies like JD Powers make their money), but one can still go to the actual press release. That provides more (and often clearer) information than one gets elsewhere (rewrites of the PR).
The survey has been going on for many years (at least since 2008) - the rewrite said just the past two years. It is true that the survey was restructured in 2014, but it appears that the same 1,000 point scale was preserved. (I can't find any description of the scale, e.g. whether it is linear, or like M* ratings distributed unevenly.)
Here's the 2015 release, 2014 release, and 2013 release.
It seems that what the restructuring amounted to was using the same seven factors (e.g. compensation, operational support, etc.) in surveying all advisors post 2013, as opposed to using different factors for employee advisors (9 factors) and for independent advisors (8 factors). The older surveys also ordered the weighting of the factors differently depending upon whether the advisor was an employee or independent.
Not that I think any of this matters, but if one's going to read the results, one might has well have an idea of what they're talking about.

If you have accounts with Edward Jones, ask your broker and branch manager to provide you with a written document that says in just a few sentences that he/she will always act as a fiduciary and put your interests ahead of his/her employer:
"I will always place the best interest of my clients first. I will act with prudence. I will not mislead clients, and I will provide conspicuous, full and fair disclosure of all important facts. I will avoid conflicts of interest, and I will disclose any that may arise and manage them in my clients' favor."
Then ask them to sign it. They will not sign such a document. This will not happen in today's rules, since broker/dealers, banks, and insurance companies are held to a much lower standard. What they recommend/sell to you merely has to be 'suitable', not necessarily the best option for you. That in itself should say more than all of the blather, including mine, on this page.
This is not to imply there are not some really good, honest folk who work for Edward Jones. There are. Just remember their first loyalty is, by definition of the standard of their employment, to their employer, not their clients. No matter how honest a broker/rep/salesperson is, if they will not or cannot sign a fiduciary oath, you need to ask yourself why you would trust your financial future to that company. This also does not mean everyone who will sign this document is trustworthy. That is another issue in itself. But at least you will know up front what to expect from the company who signs the paychecks.

The article suggests that one of the reasons Puerto Rico was able to amass a debt it could never repay is because mutual funds were engaged in competition to offer investors higher yield.
Makes one wonder if our mutual funds focus on our financial wellbeing, or their profits.

I don't think you can just blame the mutual fund companies here. It's also the investors who hunger for yield and don't ask (or don't care) what is juicing their returns.

According to the N Y Times, 75% of the mutual funds tracked by Morningstar own some Puerto Rico bonds. The article suggests that one of the reasons Puerto Rico was able to amass a debt it could never repay is because mutual funds were engaged in competition to offer investors higher yield.
Makes one wonder if our mutual funds focus on our financial wellbeing, or their profits. I hope my Mutual Series funds don’t own any of the risky debt floating around the market place today, but since they are now owned by Franklin Templeton, they probably do.
[See article: “The Bonds that Broke Puerto Rico,” New York Times, June 30, 2015. ]
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/01/business/dealbook/the-bonds-that-broke-puerto-rico.html?_r=0

Here's another pretty biting commentary on EJ from Motely Fool...
Can Your Edward Jones Financial Advisor Really Serve Your Best Interests?
But the worst of EJ remains here:
Edward Jones Saga

@Charles The trust of a financial adviser for a mutual fund company is not the same as that of an individual investor for a mutual fund company as the adviser may receive compensation from the fund company for selling its products.

Generally, believe that the days when financial advisers could get 1% for portfolio management of four or five mutual funds are rapidly fading.
c

Here, we're not only in complete agreement, but I may have been a step ahead (more critical) than you. I've told people for a long time that the typical one percent-ish fee strikes me as reasonable if it includes solid financial planning, considering all assets (not just AUM) and detailed needs (extended travel, major home repairs/renovation, college, BMW purchases, whatever).
1% for a few funds (or to put you in one of a half dozen "model portfolios")? Are you kidding?

@davidrmoran
From Investopedia:
Front-end loads are paid to investment intermediaries (financial planners, brokers, investment advisors) as sales commissions. As such, these sales charges are not part of a mutual fund's operating expenses. It is argued that a load is a cost that investors incur for obtaining an investment intermediary's expertise in selecting appropriate funds for clients.
From the Motley Fool: "When a broker recommends a fund for one of her clients to buy, that fund will be in all probability a load fund, and the load, or sales charge, is pocketed by the broker and/or other middlemen as payment for the "service of helping you pick a good fund.""
From wikipedia: "Front-end load
Often associated with class 'A' shares of a mutual fund. Also known as Sales Charge, this is a fee paid when shares are purchased. Also known as a "front-end load," this fee typically goes to the brokers that sell the fund's shares."
From the Financial Dictionary:
A sales fee in a mutual fund that one pays when one buys shares in the fund. That is, when an investor buys a share in a mutual fund with a front-end loan, he/she agrees to pay a third party, usually a financial institution or broker, a certain percentage of the share's value.
@Charles - this suggests that your original thoughts were true and you have no need to apologize.

What I wrote is pretty much a one-line summary of the CR study; I think that serves as substantiation.
Chuck acknowledges that the free advice you get is limited by asking: "Do you need more customized advice or additional help with your financial situation? A personalized investment plan that’s created and implemented for you by a team of professionals could be the answer. " Schwab Private Client service.
So there's more advice that you're not getting right now. But you do need to pay up for it. And give him $500K to invest. As you noted, Schwab offers a variety of these services (this one is a bit cheaper - 0.90% for equities, 0.70% for bonds).
The knock on Schwab's robo manager (Intelligent Portfolios) is that they're making their money off of the cash they allocate to your portfolio. Ted posted an article to that effect in this thread:
Schwab 'Robo-Adviser' Bets Big On Cash And 'Smart' Beta
Here's a column estimating Schwab's take (mostly from the cash allocation, but also from using their own investment products) at around 1% - about what you'd get charged for most of the services discussed in this thread.
https://www.hedgeable.com/blog/2015/02/schwab-intelligent-portfolios-review/
"Regrettably, this promising program has turned out to be a lot of smoke and mirrors."
You may be thinking that I'm leading up to saying that the "free" advice you're getting is neither free nor advice. I'm pretty close to that, but not quite there :-)
The name of the game with financial institutions is asset retention. If they can give you something of value (limited advice) at little cost to them, and get you to keep assets there, they win. The advice they're providing has value, apparently enough for your purposes. And they're not charging you, but writing it off as a cost of business (asset retention).
If it works for you, great. When you pay, at EJ or with Chuck, you should be expecting more. At least Chuck gives you a money back guarantee.

Good discussion everyone.
OK. I thought that front-loads were paid to financial planners, brokers, investment advisors as sales commissions.
So, in this case, I thought EJ would pocket the front load on the AF (or any other loaded) fund they sold to their clients.
If that is not the case, then I stand corrected and my fear in this case unrealized.
Generally, believe that the days when financial advisers could get 1% for portfolio management of four or five mutual funds are rapidly fading.
c

No question that different people have different experiences. Glad yours has been good (even if you didn't follow all the advice.)
Consumer Reports did a study of brokerage advice. Here's their 2011 - 2014 Brokerage Service Buying Guide .
I might summarize it as: what you get for free is respectable, but hardly flawless. For example, they note that only Vanguard paid attention to the tax implications of portfolio changes. "They also found most of the documents [i.e. across all the brokerages] to be filled with boilerplate language and short on real, actionable advice."
CR states that only very rarely do these reps voluntarily disclose how they're compensated, or discuss fiduciary duty vs. suitability standard.
In your example, that may have been problematic. A CFP is held to a fiduciary standard, at least when doing financial planning. (I like the analogy in the linked article - it's like a doctor escaping his client-first duty by merely prescribing drugs but not not giving medical advice. Were you "prescribed" ETFs?)
If the CFP held himself out as a fiduciary, it seems he should have disclosed a conflict of interest - Fidelity's reps get three times the compensation for assets you invest in ETFs as assets you invest in cash (MMFs, CDs, etc.) If the CFP was not acting as a fiduciary but through silence let you think (because of his title) that he was acting in your best interests, that strikes me as more insidious.
I'm not suggesting that the advice provided wasn't sound, just that free advice is generally limited in both scope and quality.

"For starters the advisory fee at Fidelity is stated as "between 0.63% and 1.7%" according to the link msf provided."
Charles wrote: "So, they [EJ] charge you 1.5% each year to manage your life savings". I simply responded with the same phrasing, figuring we both knew what that meant. The article states that EJ "charges up to 1.5%", so apples to apples, EJ still looks cheaper than Fidelity.
" I don't think that either Charles or I (I'm sure about me) were suggesting that EJ or anyone else (e.g. Fidelity, Schwab etc) other than the issuing fund company were collecting the loads charged."
Charles continued: "Will sell you American's front-loaded funds, which takes 5.75% off the top (and Edward Jones pockets)." It sure sounded like Charles was suggesting that EJ collected the loads.
You may have meant something different, but your article quote was: "Jones last year earned $49.4 million in revenue sharing from sales". Those are loads (and/or trailing commissions, another form of loads, per SEC). That's $49.4 million of loads collected by EJ. (Well, technically collected by American funds and "shared" with EJ, hence revenue "sharing".) That's why I noted that this amount was in addition to the servicing fees received by EJ from the funds.
-----
@Maurice - what Fidelity suggests with Premium services is that you "Talk to your [Fidelity] financial consultant about a referral to an independent, registered investment advisor who can provide customized portfolio management, advice, and specialized products."
It seems Fidelity Premium Services does not provide advice - you need to go elsewhere and pay for it.
No pressure for high rev products at Fidelity? When I moved an annuity out of Fidelity, they called me at 6:30 in the morning local time, and spent a half hour trying to talk me into undoing that. They even got an annuity specialist on the line midway through the conversation.
The products for which reps get the highest compensation, i.e. trailing fees, are Portfolio Advisory Services (PAS) and annuities.
I figure that's why my rep kept reminding me for a few years that I could offload all my portfolio management work onto PAS. He gradually accepted my statement that I prefer to do this myself, and has since gently tossed a product idea or two my way from time to time. A much improved working relationship.

After the financial crisis and the correction bottomed, and my TGLDX went from the low 20s (my entry) to around 80, that warm "pet rock" provided me with an extraordinarily pleasurable fondle! And things are setting up that lead to speculate it could happen again .... with my "full consent"--- honey, I'm letting you know ahead of time... for you and only you, yes means YES, forever!

@Ted Oh, damn it, I actually did scan down the list, thinking it was the kind of article that would be something you would have already posted. I must have scrolled right past it. With other things needing to get done, and an unexpected dead battery problem (maybe, maybe not?); and several buzz saws revving outside the house on a 150' half-dead poplar (after begging housing development manager for a year to take it out, he hires a crew and sends them out today without the courtesy of a heads-up)....... I had a few extra distractions. :)
But I too thought it worthy of posting. Interesting that the smart money ain't buying the hype no more while it appears that "data-free" retailers are continuing to come to another Jesus for financial salvation (sigh...same as it ever was).