Quote Originally Posted by callen View Post
If you have paid or been asked to pay a 5% entry fee you should have politely told your adviser to F&*^ off. A standard entry fee is between 1-2% for managed funds and between 0.1-0.5% for direct shares (normally with a minimum fee of about $30-35 for online brokers and $80 for face to face brokers)and as you mentioned a lot of adviser will rebate some of this. The financial advise industry has drastically changed in the past few years and commisions are either non existent or soon will be and you will have to pay a "fee for service" just as you would if you need advice from any other profession e.g Accountant, Lawyer etc.

Also what you are forgetting here is that you havn't lost anything until you sell as you still own the same amount of shares/units and have only lost when you sell.
What you say is not incorrect, but still a little over simplistic.

Due to the large reduction in borrowing capacity for virtualy all enterprises, a large number of the listed companies have raised money by issuing capital, thereby diluting the value of the shareholding even further than the crash did.

Therefore, broadly speaking, even a return to an All Ords index of 6800 will not restore the amount you have lost due to the capital raising diluting your holdings.

I'm sure many clients are satisfied with the mantra "you haven't lost anything till you sell", but it's really BS of the highest order, and if any adviser to whom I were thinking of paying a fee for service said that to me I'd be out the door in a flash.

I now have a mentor whose portfolio has returned over 100% this year and the fee for service is $299 per annum. No advice is given, it's just a pity I'm not brave enough to buy what he buys at the times he does, so I haven't made anything like that.