My mother had a good sum of money with a full service broker. He made money for her over a long period. I had bad experiences with full-service brokers in the past, but was willing to give my mom’s old broker a chance when she passed away.
So I placed about $60,000 with him. Another $60,000 I placed in a Fidelity account and did my own stock selection.
It has been about 9 months since I started, in a down market. The results? Both accounts have lost money, but my self-managed discount brokerage account is up about $6000 over the account a full commission broker manages. I bought mostly dividend paying value stocks on limit order. Examples are SBLK and ZIM. My broker bought some large-cap dividend payers like CSX, but also high-flying growth stocks like Amazon and Tesla.
I plan to keep up the competition for at least a year, to give him the benefit of an up market. My take so far is that this broker underperforms in a down market. We will see about up markets.