Wealth manager

A wealth manager is a person working for a bank who helps the high net worth people to manage their wealth. Usually the client needs to have assets of more than a certain sum, e.g. $250,000.

The wealth manager tells the client that they will help the client to earn a good return on the wealth and will tell some stories about how this can happen. But there is no guarantee.

In some cases, the wealth manager can help the client to make some money but in other cases, the wealth manager loses money for the client. On average, the loses outweigh the gains.

The wealth manager is usually involved in advising on short term speculations on the currency or stock markets. These speculations are at best a zero sum game. The gains made by some come from the losses made by the other speculators.

However, the wealth managers and the banks earn a large fee and commission from handling these transactions. So, in the long run, the clients tend to lose out. For each client that makes money, there is likely to be another client that loses a larger sum, due to the fees.

The experience of many clients who entrusted their wealth to be managed by the wealth managers had been disappointing during the current downturn of the market. However, during good times, they have not been great either.

The lesson: invest for the long term. Avoid short term speculations. The wealth managers cannot help you to spot winning trends. If they can, they would be wealthy on their own.

Tan Kin Lian