Recently one of my relatives (who is retired) asked me to look over his Edward Jones statements. First, I noticed something saying the risk tolerance was "low to moderate", which seems fair for a retired person I suppose. Then, there was a table comparing the portfolios performance to the S&P. So for the last 5 years, it showed the S&P returning about 10% annualized. For the edward jones portfolio, this number was about 3.6%. But again, I thought "maybe this is acceptable for a retired person". Then the next number I saw seemed particularly troubling: Year to date performance of the S&P was at -15%; Year to date performance of the EJ portfolio was -20%. So for what is supposed to be a conservative portfolio for a retired person, I wouldnt think you should see drawdowns that are larger than the S&Ps drawdowns, especially given the lousy rate of return the last 5 years. (and by the way, the last 5 years was the maximum time frame I could look at. I wish I had data from further back in time)

I know this subreddit is already biased against financial advisors (and probably rightfully so). But, putting that aside, am I correct for thinking that something is wrong here, when my relative is seeing lower 5 year returns and a higher YTD drawdown compared to the S&P? Is this the red flag I think it is?

My grandparents have a few hundred thousand invested with the local EJ salesman. I took a look at their portfolio and it showed the management fee took half of the gains on the investment bringing my grandparents return to 3%. What a rip off.