Are you tops?

Are you on the list of Barron’s Top 100 Financial Advisers? Should you be? And how much does it really matter?

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If you are a subscriber to Barron’s or have passed a newsstand, you’ve probably seen this week’s cover story, “Top 100 Financial Advisers.”
The article and listing are the Kentucky Derby of the paper’s three annual “top adviser” stories.
The Preakness and Belmont Stakes of Barron’s triple crown of adviser races, so to speak, are the “Top 100 Women Financial Advisers” in June and the “Top 100 Independent Advisers” in August.
Are you on the lists? Should you be? Does it matter?
The articles and listings are based on data gathered by R.J. Shook, founder and president of The Winner’s Circle LLC of Boca Raton, Fla., who has built a miniature publishing empire on ranking advisers for his own books, and for newspapers and magazines.
While some have charged that Mr. Shook, a former adviser at Prudential-Bache Securities Inc. of New York, is too close to the brokerage establishment and goes too easy on brokerage advisers, his data seem objective.
And in the interests of full disclosure, I must reveal that I did some freelance editing for R.J. several years ago and found him honest and direct — if, like many entrepreneurs, a bit scattered.
The repressed entrepreneur in me, in fact, is a little envious of The Winner’s Circle. It’s an ingenious marketing “gimmick,” and I use quotation marks because I’m not sure whether that word, which has a hint of trickery, is appropriate.
I’m ambivalent because I’m not sure what constitutes a “best” or “top” adviser and whether such a person exists.
One would think that “best” is in the eye — and pocketbook — of the customer.
The Winner’s Circle says that since performance varies by individual and can’t be audited, it interviews clients and takes into account client satisfaction and client retention. But the rankings seem to favor assets under management, comments by senior executives at the brokerage firms where the advisers are employed, and compliance with “best practices,” which is an overused and essentially meaningless term.
By focusing on size, the methodology seems tautological: Big equals good.
That doesn’t sit well. Although I’m sure many of the big advisers on the list are terrific, there probably are hundreds of advisers who manage unremarkable sums of money who also are terrific.
I also find the idea of three separate lists a little weird — especially the one for female advisers. Isn’t separate but equal not equal?
If an adviser is an adviser, how can there be 100 best financial advisers, 100 best female financial advisers and 100 best independent advisers?
Maybe the reason for 300 top 100 advisers is not because investors are demanding three different cuts of advice excellence but rather because three listings provide wonderful marketing sizzle for those advisers fortunate enough to make the roster.
Since the top adviser rankings come from a publishing company and not from brokerage firms themselves, they don’t carry the reams of disclosure that would accompany, say, a mutual fund offering.
Nevertheless, the lists still bear the influence of Wall Street, and by now, experience should have taught most investors to take much of what the Street says with a grain of salt.
But investors don’t always learn from experience.
So if you make one of those lists this year, congratulations. If not, there’s always next year and other lists — or maybe no list at all.