highlifejoker:
I think that you may be missing the point. There are far more millionaire next door types than people on the "Carl Ichan" path. Not to say that anyone here would be managing an individual of that caliber's money, but the point here is that most people on this forum who launch these small 1-5 person shops are going to be managing those kinds of individuals money. So as long as their abiding by the law, who cares who there business partners are, so long as the are ethical and can do the job effectively in the appropriate price range.
I happen to believe that this is going to be a pretty important emerging market in the next 5 years as more and more investors are realizing that even if they have the market knowledge to do well in th markets on their own, the process to deliver the maximum return that they're capable of is way too time consuming and mutual funds both by nature of investment company rules in place by our friendly regulators and shear lack of talent at many of these firms will lead them to seek out other alternatives. As they began to turn to 1-2 person shop RIA's and small RIA firms, these firm will in turn look to tools like small hedge funds, fund of funds, like organized commodity pools to deliver results while they concentrate on financial planning, client acquisition & management, as well as developing other services/lines of business.
Folks, it is time to start looking at how your practice intergrates with the entire financial services industry as a whole so that you can build your create successes out of dreams.
See the writing on the wall. People are disgusted with Wall Street & Main street "Brokers" alike. So folks will be willing to consider options soon.
My $0.02 -- though it feels like I just made someone a quick $10MILLION USD .... maybe