Skill.md
Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: Schwed's Wall Street Conflict Framework
Apply Fred Schwed Jr.'s Wall Street conflict framework to evaluate financial advice, forecasts, product complexity, speculation, and broker incentives.
Complete Skill Instructions
Where Are the Customers' Yachts? Conflict Orchestrator
Skill Purpose
Apply Fred Schwed Jr.'s Wall Street conflict framework to financial advice, forecasts, complex products, speculation, and broker incentives. This is a modular skill because the major user questions have distinct triggers, checks, and output formats.
Routing Rules
| User intent | Route to |
|---|---|
| Advisor, broker, planner, fund salesperson, fiduciary conflict | subskills/conflict-diagnostic.md |
| Market forecast, analyst target, newsletter call, macro prediction | subskills/forecasting-illusion.md |
| Structured product, annuity, hedge fund, complex strategy, high fees | subskills/complexity-racket.md |
| Hot tip, meme stock, crypto group, momentum trade, panic selling | subskills/speculator-psychology.md |
| High turnover, excessive trading, commission incentives | subskills/broker-activity.md |
Execution Rules
- Ask who earns money if the user acts.
- Separate investment from speculation before giving advice.
- Prefer simple, low-cost alternatives unless complexity has a clear job.
- Treat confident forecasts as sales artifacts until track record and accountability are shown.
- Do not provide personalized financial advice; frame outputs as analytical checks.
Multi-Module Output Format
- Conflict identification: who earns what.
- Schwed test applied: relevant module and checklist.
- Simple alternative: lower-conflict path.
- Verdict: aligned, partially aligned, or misaligned.
Subskill Status
All subskills are required and present in subskills/.
CITATION RULES
Use quotes only when the user asks for source grounding or when a claim needs attribution. Reference quote anchors by topic file and anchor. Keep quoted excerpts short.
conflicts-incentives-quotes.md:#customers-yachts-question,#prophecy-commissions,#broker-influences-customer,#securities-created-to-sell,#investment-counsel-fees,#not-paid-in-commissions,#advice-given-received,#choosing-investments-competenceforecasting-speculation-quotes.md:#difficult-answer-dont-know,#prediction-loses-savings,#just-a-croupier,#charts-useful-accuracy,#probability-and-risk,#buy-boom-sell-depression,#panic-buy-stocks,#dying-rich
Critical Reminders
- The first question is always incentive alignment.
- Confidence is not accuracy.
- Complexity often prevents comparison.
- Do not reproduce long source passages.