You may like the company, but do you trust your Financial Advisor? Any given company is really only as good as they guy’s advice on the other end of the line when you call. Before working with any advisor there are some things you can do.

First go to this website: www.finra.org it totally free and easy to use. You can search for information about a firm or about individual Financial Advisors and you don’t have to know the brokers Rep Number either. Just input their first and last name in the search field and you’ll find your person. Here you will find employment history, tests they have passed, states their licensed in, and any customer complaints and disputes, as well as the outcome for those events.

Just because your Advisor has had a complaint or dispute lodged against them does not mean they are a rogue broker as they used to call them. It’s a tough business as sometimes not easy to avoid unhappy customers trying to make someone else responsible for bad decisions. No one complains about their Financial Advisor in a bull market, but when a bear market hits people point fingers.

I can over look one complaint or dispute if it was resolved in favor of the broker, but it there are a string of them, that’s not a good pattern; maybe look elsewhere. You should feel free to ask your advisor for clarification of what you find on his report as well.

This is just the first step to finding a good Financial Advisor. Check out the company, check out the man; you could save yourself a lot of headaches. If he checks out okay on the website ask what his philosophy towards investing is. Remember, Financial Advisors are similar to self employed workers and each has their own philosophy that may or may not be in line with the company they work for.

Good luck and happy shopping

Should you invest in the stock market or should you avoid it at all costs? I truly believe there is no single right or wrong answer at this point. The stock market is more unsettled than most of us have ever seen it in our lifetime, and the volatility and uncertainty don’t look to be going away anytime soon. Does that mean no one should invest in the stock market? No, not necessarily.

Let’s take a look at a couple of different examples. First let’s say you are a 61 year old who has just retired from the manufacturing industry and you are sitting at home looking at some of the manufacturing stocks and thinking they can’t possibly get any cheaper. You are thinking it might be a good idea to invest a lot of your retirement money in some of these stocks. I strongly suggest that you not make this move. Those who are at or near retirement should be investing in safer assets, and while some of these stocks appear dirt cheap, they have appeared that way to people for many months and they just keep getting cheaper. Be careful and invest very carefully if you are in this type of situation!

On the other hand if you are a 24 year old who has just graduated and gotten a decent job and want to put a little bit of money to work in the market that is done so much, I can’t argue with scaling into the stock market at these levels. You have time on your side and you don’t have to worry about the short term volatility that the stock market will have. Over the long run the stock market is likely to perform quite nicely if you are able to stomach the volatility in the interim.

There is no single answer as to whether stocks are cheap enough now to invest in them. Take a good hard look at your personal situation now before investing in this market. Stocks appear cheap now, but they can and very likely may get quite a bit cheaper yet. Tread carefully in this volatile market!