Welcome to the ETF Prime Podcast

5 Questions You Must Ask Your Financial Advisor

Listen to The ETF Store Show every Tuesday at 9am on ESPN 1510 as we cover everything you need to know about Exchange Traded Funds and the world of investing.

Click here to listen to The ETF Store Show now.

Some investors select their financial advisor based on the name on the door – the brand, if you will.  Other investors are referred to a financial advisor by family or friends.  While neither of these is necessary a bad place to start, it can be a big mistake to assume that a well-known brand or solid referral will yield the best financial advisor for your situation.  Regardless of how you initially find an advisor, it’s critical to your financial future that you still ask the right questions before ultimately deciding to work with that advisor.  On our most recent radio broadcast, we armed you with the five key questions that you absolutely must ask a financial advisor before hiring them.  Don’t be shy.  If your advisor is uncomfortable answering these questions or simply can’t answer them satisfactorily, you should look for another advisor.  Listen to our full broadcast as we go into detail on each of the following key questions to pepper your advisor with:

• How are you compensated?  In other words, how do you make money off of me?
• Do you have a fiduciary obligation to your clients?
• What investment products do you use?
• What is your investment philosophy or approach to investing?
• How often do you discuss the overall performance of my portfolio and how it relates to my financial plan moving forward?

While there are certainly other questions you can ask, if you use the above as the foundation, you should have a pretty good idea on how the advisor operates and whether they’re the right fit for you.  And, by the way, demand excellence in the answers – it’s your money and your financial future.

In addition to discussing the key questions to ask a financial advisor before hiring them, we conducted our usual weekly market update, fielded our listener question of the week, and spotlighted a very interesting (and popular) low volatility equity ETF – the PowerShares S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF (ticker SPLV).

We Talk “ETF OneSource” with Schwab’s Eric Pollackov

Listen to The ETF Store Show every Tuesday at 9am on ESPN 1510 as we cover everything you need to know about Exchange Traded Funds and the world of investing.

Click here to listen to The ETF Store Show now.

Back in February, Charles Schwab announced what we called an “ETF Game Changer” – the launch of Schwab ETF OneSource.  On our most recent radio broadcast, Eric Pollackov, Managing Director of ETFs at Charles Schwab, joined us to offer his thoughts on this new ETF platform and also discuss some exciting new “fundamental” ETFs that Schwab has in registration.  We also chatted about Schwab’s core lineup of inexpensive, broad-based ETFs and why investment costs have become an even bigger concern for investors over the last several years.

In addition to our conversation with Eric, we spent a good chunk of the show offering a nice refresher on how Exchange Traded Funds compare to mutual funds or even individual stocks and bonds.  We explained how ETFs can potentially lower your investment costs, offer greater tax efficiency, allow for more diversification, and remove the risk of mutual fund manager underperformance.  We also fielded our “Listener Question of the Week” and spotlighted one of the aforementioned Schwab core ETFs – the Schwab U.S. Mid-Cap ETF (ticker SCHM).