FINANCIAL ADVISORS: What should I major and minor in to be a Financial Planner, Advisor, or Broker?

Q: Isn't a Stock Broker a dying profession because of E*Trade and ScottTrade.

A: There is a quite a big difference in the jobs of a financial planner, an advisor, and a broker. You can also add the position of a trader to your list. When I get asked by college students what they need to do to get into a job working with the markets, I immediately suggest courses in Finance and Psychology. If you want to be a financial planner, you definitely need to focus on getting your CPA accreditation. I would also encourage you to take courses in futures and options, too often people in the industry are only guided by long positions in stocks and bonds, while futures gives you the opportunity to invest in long and short positions with smaller capital requirements so you get more working capital to play with. Options are even better in giving you a lot of flexibility in longs/shorts from specific stocks to crude oil, to corn. Options are very exciting. Depending on what exactly you want to do, and spent more time studying it, I would strongly encourage you to be very well rounded on all aspects related to the markets - with courses in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Psychology, Equity Markets, Futures and Options, Stats, and others. As you start to study these, in a Bachelor of Business or Commerce major, you'll be able to identify the areas you find exciting and focus from there. And you are right in that trading software and electronic platform will eliminate the need for a stock broker in the typical sense that people imagine it to be - a trader working in the pit of an exchange. However this new trend makes it even more important to have great talent managing the trades - the electronic trading is so much faster with so much more volume and absolutely no noise that it is very difficult to get a sense of what the market is saying besides what the tick board says. Gone are the days when we could base our trades on what we saw other traders were doing in the pit, what the chatter in the pit was about, who was making the big trades... now all we see is the price board, and its up to the traders to figure out what is going on. Makes it very exciting and puts much more emphasis on having good traders. I hope this helps, if not give me a shout. I used to trade in a major exchange, and absolutely love the excitement and dynamic behavior of the market. Good luck to you.

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