First of all, I used to be a stockbroker, but gave that up to be a stay at home mom, so I have some experience in this business.

I have been a Fisher Investments client since 1999 and have been very happy. However, the salesperson I met with was a very non-pushy woman named Judy. She was happy to show me their performance and even pointed out that in a particular quarter in '98 or about a year before I signed up their portfolios were down about 13%, but then recovered all of it shortly. (I think she would have given me their performance anyway, but why did you wait until AFTER you signed up to look at it?) She told me that unless I wanted to stay for the long term, don't even sign up because these short term swings can happen any time. They aren't going to try to time every correction along the way, because that is impossible, but will try to get out of the big ones

Maybe you aren't the right client for them, but I can't believe you would be so short sighted to only give them a few weeks. I don't care if it is Fisher Investments, a mutual fund, or a financial planner, or god forbid, me when I was a broker.

Your comments about showing Fisher Investments versus some of the big mutual funds is funny. It reminds me of how I was taught to try to get new clients in as a broker. With the benefit of hindsight I was able to point out the best performing mutual funds in any time period. Take any time period and you can find credible funds that did a lot better than anything your client had. Not the real world however.

But, to be fair, Fisher isn't perfect. They do keep in contact with me as often as I like. They have client seminars once a year, but they have grown to be big hotel events. They also have changed my contact person quite often, but usually after a while I don't care. Also, as you mentioned, they did get into the market too early and got hammered in the last part of 2002. I complained, and like you, thought I needed to get out. However, my contact person kept me in and I rode up the next up cycle. I think if I was on my own I would have bailed out and then never would have gotten back in.