There Must Be 50 Million Ways to Leave Your Broker

“By 78, he said he was worth at least $50 million. And, according to his family, he was starting to show signs of dementia. What followed over the next half-decade was an almost total wealth wipeout, as Peter’s wife, Yoon, said they increasingly depended on JPMorgan’s advice for managing their portfolio, only to watch it lurch ever closer to zero.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): JPMorgan Is in a Fight Over Its Client’s Lost $50 Million Fortune. “The couple’s situation spotlights an issue that has always lurked on Wall Street but is surging in scale as the baby boom generation retires with a record stockpile of wealth. Legions of boomers have enough saved to be deemed “accredited” or “sophisticated” investors under US securities laws, qualifying them to buy into riskier, complex asset classes with juicy commissions for intermediaries. Yet many of those clients will inevitably face cognitive decline. The industry lacks a formal system to detect when that happens.” (The industry does however have a system to detect when a portfolio’s value goes from $50 million down to near nothing.)