Whoever is seeking someone else to manage their money should read Warren Buffett's fable first. According to the Oracle, the investors' community as a whole are paying 20% of potential returns as "frictional costs".

This is not to say you shouldn't seek opinions. For example, Morningstar's Premium Membership can well be classified as the "consultant-Helpers," but at $125/year, it is probably the most affordable quality advice you can buy. (And even if you cannot afford it, try the free Investing Classroom so you know what to ask the next time those Helpers, manager-Helpers, consultant-Helpers and hyper-Helpers peddle their services.

And that’s where we are today: A record portion of the earnings that would go in their entirety to owners – if they all just stayed in their rocking chairs – is now going to a swelling army of Helpers. Particularly expensive is the recent pandemic of profit arrangements under which Helpers receive large portions of the winnings when they are smart or lucky, and leave family members with all of the losses – and large fixed fees to boot – when the Helpers are dumb or unlucky (or occasionally crooked).

A sufficient number of arrangements like this – heads, the Helper takes much of the winnings; tails, the Gotrocks lose and pay dearly for the privilege of doing so – may make it more accurate to call the family the Hadrocks. Today, in fact, the family’s frictional costs of all sorts may well amount to 20% of the earnings of American business. In other words, the burden of paying Helpers may cause American equity investors, overall, to earn only 80% or so of what they would earn if they just sat still and listened to no one.