March 15, 2004
The proposed confirmations and similar documents strike me as providing information that should be in a fund prospectus and not on a confirmation document - the transaction is done by the time one gets to the confirmation document stage. If brokers/dealers provide the fund prospectus, it could be useful to require them to include an insert showing what payments, benefits, and conflicts of interest they may have with the fund. However, the investor-trust/broker-greed ratio will always be a fractional factor the influence of which depends upon maintenance of a valid competitive market. The investor must rely upon that and upon the SEC to do its regulatory and supervisory job.