In the latest issue of The Felder Report, I wrote, “The Wall Street Journal reports that companies like Morgan Stanley Smith Barney paid bonuses to ‘top producers’ (aka, commission generators) of over ten million dollars or more last year. Undoubtedly, there are many new orders for yachts being placed by brokers in 2010,” in a reference to Fred Schwed’s classic Wall Street takedown “Where Are the Customer’s Yachts?”
Well it seems I was more prescient than even I imagined. Clusterstock reports today that yacht sales are running fully 50% higher than last year:
Brokers must be celebrating not only the huge bonuses they got last year but also the fact that Congress has decided to let them continue to shun fiduciary duty.