The term "churning" applies to the number of transactions your financial advisor makes on your behalf. Typically, the term is used as an accusation; an advisor is "churning" if they make excessive or unnecessary trades just to generate commissions for themselves.
Reverse churning, as you might guess, is the opposite practice. Doing nothing. Just letting your portfolio sit there. Think about your cousin, who's been playing video games in his parents' basement, ostensibly "working on his screenplay" for the past 15 years. Reverse churning.
So...is that bad? If too much churning is bad, than reverse churning must be good, right?
No, not really. While you don't want an advisor getting crazy with their activity, you aren't paying them to do nothing. They take a fee for their services. If you wanted someone to do nothing, you could have invested the money yourself and saved the fee. (Or just had your screenplay-writing cousin add "investment advising" to his daily to-do list.)
Reverse churning suggests that your advisor is taking all the fees they collect and heading to the golf course every day.
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Finance: What is Acting Against Recommen...2 Views
finance a la shmoop what is acting against recommendations hmm
let's say you head to the emergency room with stomach pains the doctor in charge [Man driving fast with stomach pains]
says yep you've got appendicitis but I'm brutally
tired so I recommend you go home well odds are if the doc himself had [Doctor in pain with stomach pains]
appendicitis he'd get someone to take that puppy out stat acting against
recommendations is kind of like that just in the financial world if your
broker tells you to do something he wouldn't recommend for his own [Man discussing finance with his broker]
investments well he has a duty to tell you that he wouldn't do that same thing
in his own case that usually happens when some bonehead tells a broker, hey I
want to bet my life savings on this new IPO well why would anyone act against
recommendations well in the case of the doc maybe he's so tired that he's a [Doctor holding scalpel and falls to the floor]
dangerous menace in the O.R... In the case of your broker well maybe there's
something about your specific situation that makes acting against recommendation
the way to go well as long as they tell you that it's against recommendations
well, they're legally in the cure just don't ask that broker to perform
your kidney transplant [Broker walks into office]
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