There are two types of investors, institutional investors and retail investors, and two types of asset managers, institutional asset managers and retail asset managers. Retail investors (individual investors) are those that are part of the 99%. These investors are the regular, run of the mill, mom & pop type of  investor that the big wall street brokers love to sell things to. As a matter of fact, this is where wall street makes most of its money, selling products to people on main street.

Brokers, registered representatives, stock brokers, & commissioned agents are all types of retail asset managers. They sell all of the fancy financial products that the big wall street firms invent for the retail public to buy on main street, usually with considerable mark-ups and commissions that are paid to the retail brokers.

Charles  Schwab, one of the pioneers in breaking the traditional wall street selling machine model, aired this commercial in 2002 that highlighted the conflicts of interest that many of these big wall street firms are faced with when they push and entice their retail sales army “put lipstick on the pig” for court side tickets.