Why Bother?

The SEC enters into another rounding error settlement with a financial insitution, this time Wells Fargo. Wells agrees to pay the princely sum of $6.5 million -- vs net income of $15 billion last year -- for providing advisory services to non-profits that apparently consisted of looking at the credit ratings on some MBS and telling the clients to buy those.

Comments

[Adam Levitin]

Covers the SEC's costs.

[Adam Levitin]

Or put another way, it's like counting coup.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_coup

[Stephen Lubben]

While neither admitting or denying ...

[Thomas WIcklund]

Seeing these cases, I'm reminded of a Doonesbury cartoon many years ago where the homeless lady gives simple investing advice: "Index funds".

Given the repeated finding that nobody can beat the market, institutional investors might be well advised to consider saving the high fees and likely see higher long term returns.