If surgeons were held to the same skill, planning, preparation, procedural, accountability, and performance standards as Wall Street, many investment firms, and most investment advisors as they advise individual investors — most of whom are hopeful, trusting, naive, and unsuspecting — there would be no residency requirements, they would only be required to have a high school diploma to practice medicine, and they would need to take just six months of high school woodshop safety (class or correspondence) to be board certified surgeons with specialties of their own choosing.

If the techniques, tools, and theories surgeons trusted and used were of the same quality and integrity in their specific fields of medical expertise as those used by Wall Street, many investment firms, and most investment advisors as they advise individual investors within their circles of responsibilities, an Apple-A-Day would be a wonder drug, Ouija Boards and Crystal Balls would be considered advanced medical tools, and Voodoo, Séances, and Witchcraft would be Pulitzer Prize winning Modern Medical Theories.

If surgeons were as undisciplined in their professions as Wall Street, many investment firms, and most investment advisors are in their respective areas of advertised expertise as they advise individual investors, a lucky few would succeed, thus further proving the validity of the phrase, 'dumb luck,' most patients would have surgical complications, and, many, regrettably, would not survive.

Extinction of what should be the noble and important profession of investment advising is a distinct possibility because all markets eventually close the inefficiency gaps — the spreads of which are most often so wide one could drive a Mac Truck through them — between value and price, competent and unqualified, skilled and unskilled, serving and self-serving, rhetoric and results, and, most of all, good investment advising judgment and management and bad investment advising judgment and management.

Solution:

Investment Advisors must first ask themselves a few questions:

• Would I do business with me?
  
• Would I build a financial future with me?
  
• Would I entrust my life savings with me?
  
• Would an investor, Warren Buffett for that matter, agree that I know what I am doing if he were present while I went through the investment selection and investment portfolio creation decision making process in preparation for proposing an investing course of action?
  
• Would I invest my capital as proposed if I were to receive one of the investment plans I recommend to others?

Then...

Create an organized, efficient, and disciplined investing environment in which each investor — regardless of investment need, knowledge, experience, and the amount of investment capital — will be honorably, properly, intelligently, and efficiently served consistent with each investor's investment profile and investment goals, the current market conditions, and the market outlook as the financial markets and relative investment values change — traditional investing values and principles, proven investing strategies, nothing learned the hard way, do it right the first time, suitable, hopefully timely investments, full disclosure, investor informed, economic best interest investing in specifics and in detail.

Individual Investors

Problem:

Legions of sorcerers spin their tales of what to do and why, but rare are the ones who can tell you how and when and then lead the way.

Investors are most often adrift, at the mercy of capricious investing winds and tides, with results being much more by chance than by design.

Solution:

Investors need a forward-looking planned and managed investing course — a detailed decision making, action taking process — controlled by a masterful helmsman; an advisor or the investor.

Advisors and Investors

Problem:

All investment advisors and investors make both 'right' and 'wrong' investment selection and investment timing decisions — true from Buffett and Soros to you and to me — because being both 'investment right' and 'investment wrong' are built into the financial markets.

"Wrong" investment decisions are not the primary reasons for investing failure:

Investing

Problem:

Investment portfolios and monthly statements often look much like the "Winchester Mystery House" without consistency, discipline, direction, continuity, control, or theme.

Solution:

Investments selected at random and governed by thoughtfully defined, relentlessly applied, and rigidly enforced investment portfolio design, management, and performance disciplines, rules, and procedures — the weakest or completely missing investing performance link for most investment advisors and almost all individual investors — will outperform most market indexes almost all of the time.

To the extent that investment selection and investment timing can be improved with investment selection and management disciplines rules, and procedures (Bonds, for example), investing performance will improve exponentially.

Solution:

Create an investment plan composed of three parts; Part 1, 'Where you are trying to go," Part 2, 'How you are going to get there,' and Part 3, 'How well you have done; 1, 2, 3 a Money Management Plan — organized, efficient, disciplined, and in control.