March 15, 2004
Ive avoided dealing with brokers for the past 7 years because I didnt trust that they were working for me versus themselves. Recently, I opened a flat fee based account at Morgan Stanley. The costs of this Choice account were explained and fairly easily understood. They offered me two mutual funds and to my surprise the fees charged and who got these fees was listed within the first few pages of the 100+ page portfolio, plus attachments. I quickly computed the costs versus the rewards and decided that one
was far to aggressive for me and the other met my needs at an acceptable fee. Stating these fees up front is a much better way to deal with a broker or for that matter anyone.
I refuse to buy a fund without this information up front.