Customer Recommendations Flashcards
Churning
Is A Prohibited Practice
Excessive transactions. An advisor doing excessive transactions with clients accounts not for the benefit of the client but rather to increase commissions
Reverse Churning
Is A Prohibited Practice
Taking a customers account that doesn’t trade very much and putting it in a fee based account to get more commissions on it and its not in the clients best interest
Capping
Is A Prohibited Practice
trying to keep a stock price down
Ie: entering in a large amount of sales orders before the end of the trading day to decrease the stock price
Pegging
Is A Prohibited Practice
trying to keep the stock price high
Ie: entering in a large number of buy orders before the end of the day to increase the stock price
Front running
Is A Prohibited Practice
Placing a firms order before a customers order
Trading Ahead
Is A Prohibited Practice
Placing a trade just before the release of a research report (while knowing information about the report before its released)
Painting the Tape
Is A Prohibited Practice
(matched purchases / matched sales / washed sales)
Buying and selling stocks multiple times to people who are in the loop with you to try and create false activity in the stock in order for it to look active.
Ie: two people sell the stock back and forth to each other to try and make the stock activity look good.
Unauthorized Trading
Is A Prohibited Practice
A person cannot execute an order for a client without written discretionary authority. If they don’t have it they must first consult the client
Fraud
Is A Prohibited Practice
The intentional deception of a client or another party fort he purpose of gaining a material advantage over that person
Blanket Recommendations
Is A Prohibited Practice
Each person has different investment objectives and so you cant give every person the same exact recommendation
Misrepresentations
Is A Prohibited Practice
Misrepresenting your or your firms qualifications, recommendations, research department, trading team, customers account status, misquote a stock. Etc…
Omitting material facts
Is A Prohibited Practice
Omitting facts that a person would need to know in order to make an educated investment decision
Guarantees
Is A Prohibited Practice
No registered person may make any guarantee of any kind. The only guarantees in this industry are from:
i. The US government ii. An Insurance company iii. A parent company guaranteeing the obligations of a subsidiary
Rules of Giving Recommendations
Must be suitable
Must meet clients investment objectives.
You cannot recommend 2 funds with different investment objectives
Ie: a growth fund and an income fund
When referring to your past recommendations you must provide all your past recommendations not just the good ones
Fair dealing with customers- you must treat them all fairly not lying cheating or stealing
Institutional customers: the advisor can recommend anything and it is assumed that the institution can decide for themselves if it’s a good investment or not. This is because they are a larger sophisticated investors.
If the institution clearly doesn’t know what they are talking about then it is up to the advisor to make good decisions and recommendations for them.
When recommending Mutual Funds
If you want to make a statement regarding a certain funds yield:
1) Must be based on dividends only. It cannot contain capital gains
2) The public offering price must use the highest sales charge provided by the fund. You cannot use a lower sales charge that is based upon a lower breakpoint.
Disclosure of clients information
cannot disclose client information without client approval or without a court order. A 3rd party in not allowed in unless the client approves in period.
Borrowing and lend money
an advisor may borrow money from a client if:
○ They are a close family relative
○ They have a personal relationship and that is the basis of the loan
○ If they are an institution that is in the business of providing loans (ie: you have a bank as a client)
○ From a person that is registered at the same firm if the firm allowed it and the firm supervised the repayment
Customer Complaints
Must be on retention for 4 years. (Must be on file for 4 years)
Quarterly Electronic Reporting
15 days
Gifts and Entertainment
Max Value of $100 per person per year. Awards and plaques and occasional meals and entertainment etc… are excluded
The only way more than that number would be acceptable is if the person giving the gift/ entertainment goes with them. If they become ill then someone else from their firm should go instead.
Brokercheck
All broker dealers are required to provide this to customers annually
Must be provided to a customer at least once per year FINRA reports Disciplinary actions through form U6. It contains:
- Current employer and 10 years of employment history - legal and regulatory actions - pending customer arbitrations settled or awarded $10k - Sales practice violations -$5k - Civil and Criminal Investigations - Terminations for cause - Dispute via broker check comment form
New Products
Firms must have a reasonable basis for why they are providing certain products for their customers. Then they must also train the proper people in their firm about the performance and risks of that security.
A firm’s obligation begins when the registered person speaks to the person about security. At this point, the suitability responsibility should be there.
Social Media
Firms must monitor any social media used for business purposes by anyone within their firm and those registered individuals need to act in an ethical manor and bend the truth. Firms can use a library of preapproved social media posts that they can allow to be used.
Social Media becomes a Recommendation when…
=> the post is talking about a specific product.
A broker-dealers website and everything contained on it must be preapproved and anything that gets changed on it must be kept for 3 years
If a registered person enters a chat room or a blog then they enter a “public appearance”