Hoffman Estates, IL:Fisher Investments lost an arbitration against Sharyn Silverstein, who alleged in her Fisher Investments complaint that the company did not act in her best interest. Now, other customers, like Bob Hall, are coming forward, to say that they, too, lost money as a result of lower than expected Fisher Investments performance, and that representatives of Fisher Investments did not listen to their concerns.
"I was solicited by Fisher Investments many times via mail and phone calls from various people in their sales department," Hall says. "They were aggressive and this went on for a couple of years. I finally figured I should talk to them because they are aggressive, and I like that. It can be good.
"My first experience with Fisher was in California where I live 5.5 months out of the year. A young fellow just out of the Marine Corps represented them. He was very irritating—sitting in my living room telling me how to make money. I was in my winter home and retired at age 50; I know how to make money.
"Nothing happened from that. Shortly after, I went to a seminar Fisher had in Rancho Mirage, California, and I was very impressed. They had a lot of young people who were quite intelligent, so I joined Fisher. On March 6, 2008, I opened an account with $500,000. The first performance out of the box was very good and I was very happy. So, I put in another $125,000 in May. They had $625,000 of my money and at the time the portfolio was valued at $666,000. I was up roughly $41,000 and it looked very good.
"That was the end of the game. It just started going down after that. I realize that everything was going down then, but this was going down drastically. Fisher never took action to sell or convert to cash. Every time I talked to the account executive, I'd say, 'Sell, get me out. Convert it to cash, it's going down drastically.' Each time I'd talk on that subject, I always got the same answer. I was told to look at the long picture, be patient and it will work out. In all my conversations with them about selling or converting, they never did it.
"The account continued to slide, I'd talk to them and nothing would happen.
"Finally after watching the portfolio go down and hearing stories about Fisher, I decided it was enough. On Sept. 24, 2008, I transferred the account to another brokerage. My portfolio was down by about a third [it lost around 33 percent of its value from March to September]. Some of the stocks—two or three I think—were down over 60 percent. That's ridiculous. Others were at 20 percent down.
"So that's what happened. Some of it came back [after the move from Fisher], but the experience with Fisher was bad. I've heard from some others in similar situations with them. Fisher ignored what I said. They said the market would rebound. They kept telling me, 'Fisher knows what he's doing and we believe in the long picture.'"
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"I was solicited by Fisher Investments many times via mail and phone calls from various people in their sales department," Hall says. "They were aggressive and this went on for a couple of years. I finally figured I should talk to them because they are aggressive, and I like that. It can be good.
