Two recent academic papers focus on how advice provided to investors might be distorted.

The first paper relates to the disposition effect, which causes investors to sell assets on which they are making profits but hold on to assets on which they are making losses. This effect has been found to apply to both wholesale and retail investors and to result in poor investment decisions. The main finding of this paper is that the disposition effect is even stronger for those advising investors than it is for the people that they are advising.

The second paper looks...