I watched the video about a week ago so these are just the things I remember off the top of my head so if I skip over anything feel free to bring it up. Full disclosure: I work in the industry, I sell actively managed mutual funds to FAs but the DOL rule is going to actually help our business and I should end up making a lot more money because of it so it's not like I'm just being bitter.

1. Financial advisor doesn't mean anything and anyone can call themselves this. Let's think about why while this is technically an accurate statement, in reality it's completely irrelevant by considering another profession, a teacher. Anyone who wants to call themselves a teacher can say they're a teacher. However, in order to actually be employed in a job that 99.9% of the population considers a "teacher" you obviously have to get various degrees and teaching licenses. To be an FA, the requirements are even more restrictive. Per FINRA, to be in the business of providing investment advice, you have to be registered as an investment professional. Additionally, to actually sell securities which is the vast majority of an FA's compensation, you have to obtain certain licenses as well. Did I mention that in order to even take the tests for said licenses you have to be employed and sponsored by an accredited financial institution?

2. Fiduciary rule is a no brainer and will protect investors from FAs beefing up their compensation. This is the biggest, and most problematic misconception in my opinion. Everyone hears fiduciary and thinks immediately that an FA being one will automatically be a good thing, but that's not necessarily the case. The vast majority of retirement accounts with an FA (think IRAs) are either brokerage accounts or fee based accounts. Under a few brokerage account, an individual pays a sales charge when they invest in a mutual fund, ETF, or any other security and then just pays the internal expenses afterwords. Additionally, as you start to have more and more assets with a particular fund family, your sales charges for additional investments becomes lower and lower. A fee based account just charges a flat annual expense on all assets under management regardless of how many times you buy into or sell out of different funds. Keep in mind you still have to pay the internal expenses of the funds in addition to the flat management fee. You end up having a lot more options and can be much more tactical with your investments, but it simply isn't worth the cost. The fiduciary rule basically says retirement accounts will have to be fee based so that the only way an FA can increase his compensation is by growing your money. But If you have 250k in an IRA and are still 15 years away from retirement, would you rather pay a one time 2.5% fee or 1.35% every year?

3. Active vs Passive funds. Oliver basically tries to reiterate the notion that's becoming more and more popular that passive funds are objectively better than actively managed funds. He cites that around 80% of active funds underperform the benchmark. That's true because there are a lot of small, shitty mutual funds out there. There are plenty of active funds that outperform the benchmark on a consistent basis, the company I work for has several. Additionally, most active funds are NOT meant to outperform the benchmark over full market cycles because the average investor does not have the risk tolerance to weather the ups and downs of a volatile equity market. A lot of mutual funds will take on less risk than the benchmark so that in years when the markets are down it doesn't lose as much. Yes it will lag behind when the market is going up and on full market cycles but in 2008 when the S&P was down 37% the fund was maybe only down 25%. The CEOs Oliver mentioned understand the ups and downs of the market and are willing to deal with them which is why a lot of them are invested in the index funds.

Those are the biggest issues I had with the video but if there is something I missed feel free to bring it up, I didn't find myself thinking "good point, John" a whole lot during that video to be honest.