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As a user receiving advice from your robo advisors, what guarantees do you provide that the advice I receive is sound and that following the advice will result

As a user receiving advice from your robo advisors, what guarantees do you provide that the advice I receive is sound and that following the advice will result in my retirement goals being met?

roger_lee 11y ago
Our advice is based off decades of Nobel Prize-winning academic research on best practices for long-term investing.. And as an SEC registered investment advisor, we serve as a fiduciary to the 401k plan and avoid all conflicts of interest. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about how the 401k industry operates today: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/401k-conflicts-hurt-nest-egg/story?id=28199396&singlePage=true http://abcnews.go.com/Business/401k-conflicts-hurt-nest-egg/...
- boomshucka 11y ago
  Nobel prize winning academic research is awful in the finance space. It's based on flawed assumptions and it's results are completely useless. Either a) the person claiming this is aware and effectively lying, or b) don't know this and aren't competent.
  - icu 11y ago
    I agree, most of the time... perhaps start with an understanding of how models break by reading "Black Swan" and "The Misbehaviour of Markets".
- icu 11y ago
  Hi, if you are serious about this project I humbly suggest looking at life time cash flow modelling and stochastic modelling.
- jeffwass 11y ago
  Hi Roger, some not so easy questions if I may? What does this mean, that the robo advisor is based off of decades of Nobel Prize winning research? Eg - Long Term Capital Management had Nobel Prize winning Laureates guiding its investment strategy and it went bust in the late 90's as its models broke down due to market conditions outside the realm of its models. Also - how does your fiduciary duty obligation jive with your robo advisor, which I assume is an automated process? Are you manually checking each bit of advice it suggests as part of due diligence requirements? And what happens if it has bugs? Eg, if I'm a risk averse investor but your robo advisor had some buggy code and recommends I put 90% of my portfolio into emerging market equities, and I follow this erroneous advice and lose most of my investment, what recourse do I have against your company? Do you guarantee lost capital due to clearly wrong advice, or do I have to take you to court? Just curious how you are planning to deal with this type of situation, because at some point it's likely to happen (but maybe not as obvious as this example). Also your link appears to be more of an opinion piece than purely factual statement on 401k advisors.

As a user receiving advice from your robo advisors, what guarantees do you provide that the advice I receive is sound and that following the advice will result in my retirement goals being met?

roger_lee 11y ago

Our advice is based off decades of Nobel Prize-winning academic research on best practices for long-term investing.. And as an SEC registered investment advisor, we serve as a fiduciary to the 401k plan and avoid all conflicts of interest. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about how the 401k industry operates today: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/401k-conflicts-hurt-nest-egg/story?id=28199396&singlePage=true http://abcnews.go.com/Business/401k-conflicts-hurt-nest-egg/...

boomshucka 11y ago
Nobel prize winning academic research is awful in the finance space. It's based on flawed assumptions and it's results are completely useless. Either a) the person claiming this is aware and effectively lying, or b) don't know this and aren't competent.
- icu 11y ago
  I agree, most of the time... perhaps start with an understanding of how models break by reading "Black Swan" and "The Misbehaviour of Markets".
icu 11y ago
Hi, if you are serious about this project I humbly suggest looking at life time cash flow modelling and stochastic modelling.
jeffwass 11y ago
Hi Roger, some not so easy questions if I may? What does this mean, that the robo advisor is based off of decades of Nobel Prize winning research? Eg - Long Term Capital Management had Nobel Prize winning Laureates guiding its investment strategy and it went bust in the late 90's as its models broke down due to market conditions outside the realm of its models. Also - how does your fiduciary duty obligation jive with your robo advisor, which I assume is an automated process? Are you manually checking each bit of advice it suggests as part of due diligence requirements? And what happens if it has bugs? Eg, if I'm a risk averse investor but your robo advisor had some buggy code and recommends I put 90% of my portfolio into emerging market equities, and I follow this erroneous advice and lose most of my investment, what recourse do I have against your company? Do you guarantee lost capital due to clearly wrong advice, or do I have to take you to court? Just curious how you are planning to deal with this type of situation, because at some point it's likely to happen (but maybe not as obvious as this example). Also your link appears to be more of an opinion piece than purely factual statement on 401k advisors.