LOOKING OUT FOR #1

I think that's the 1st Commandment of the Free Market Fairy and certainly "dealer-brokers" adhere to it.

Under Senate bill, brokers don't have to put clients first
By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Tuesday, April 27, 2010

WASHINGTON — By law, financial planners and investment advisers have a fiduciary duty to their clients, the consumer. However, broker-dealers and insurance brokers who work with them have convinced the Senate Banking Committee, at least for now, that they deserve an exception from this duty to put the client first.

Many insurance brokers, regulated on the state level, sell annuities — which take a lump sum of a retiree's investment nest egg and disperse it over fixed or variable periods. Insurance brokers selling such securities must be a registered agent of a broker-dealer, and since broker-dealers have no fiduciary duty to clients, neither do these insurance agents.

One company fighting hard for the status quo has been Edward Jones, a St. Louis-based national investment firm whose motto is "Making Sense of Investing."