A lot of readers have been thinking similar thoughts to someone who commented on my recent post: Chasing Value: Watch BNI -- the heck with Citigroup.

• Donald wrote, "Why the hell would I take advice from a company, that as a whole, its Net income was US$ −27.684 billion for 2008.

While this is an obvious question from a skeptical investor, and we all have good reason to be skeptical, it obscures a more important issue. Is there a relationship between the financial standing of the bank and the value of an individual analyst or adviser? The answer is, absent any conflicts of interest, that there is not.

The homebuilder's market has been hit pretty hard in the last 2 years by the resounding pop of the housing market, but at some point, they're due for a turn of fortune. If you're a strong believer in the recovery of the housing market and feel that the future for homebuilders appears bright, or at least brighter than it's been in the last few years, then here's an easy and efficient way to invest in the homebuilder's market.

SPDR S&P Homebuilders (NYSE: XHB) is an exchange traded fund (ETF) that seeks to replicate the performance of an index derived from the homebuilding segment of the U.S. total market composite index before expenses. Meaning, it's a way for you to invest in homebuilders and companies that support home building, across the board rather than trying to pick and choose a single company to hedge your bets with.

With an investment in XHB you'll get shares of noted representatives from that field such as Home Depot (NYSE: HD) and Lowes (NYSE: LOW), two well-known leaders in the home improvement retail field, Ethan Allen Interiors Inc. (NYSE: ETH) a home furnishing staple, Centex Corporation (NYSE: CTX) a homebuilding giant, and Leggett & Platt Inc. (NYSE: LEG) who produces components and products used worldwide in the creation of homes and furnishings. An obvious reach into every area of the homebuilding market, using some of the most trusted companies around.

Its anyone's guess when XHB will rise, but since the beginning of 2007, XHB has lost about 67% of its value.

For only a 0.35% fee the fund tracks the total return and performance of the S&P Homebuilders Select Industry index and derives the strongest basket of holdings. You'd pay up about 3-5 times that amount to have a money manager at a mutual fund provide the same results. Review the incredible diversity of XHP by examining its top 10 holdings listed below.

I've always sensed that women make better investors than men. Call me politically incorrect but when I talk to a woman about investing, she's focused on protecting her savings, not using it to make more money. Women don't think about "beating the market." They think about being safe. They don't want to make a mistake and avoiding mistakes is sometimes what makes all the difference in getting investment returns. And women are less prone to trading and more attuned to buying and holding. As Warren Buffett says, "Activity is the enemy of performance."

Maybe it's our testosterone that drives us to turn investing into a championship sporting event. I don't know. But I've felt that the male competitive spirit often is the very thing that drives us into stupid investments.

Until recently, I couldn't put my finger on how our male "Y" chromosome puts us at a genetic disadvantage to women. However, I recently discovered that Brad Barber and Terrance Odean of UC Davis validated my intuition. They published an article in the February 2001 issue of The Quarterly Journal of Economics titled "Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment."

Barber and Odean obtained trading data from a discount brokerage for over 35,000 households and analyzed investing patterns for six years to test whether overconfidence leads to more trading and lower returns. Since in areas of finance psychologists have proven that men tend to be more prone to overconfidence, the genders were separated so that their trading habits could be studied individually.

I believe that everyone, no matter how much investment experience they have, should learn how to take control of their investing, buy a well diversified portfolio of index funds, periodically rebalance their portfolio, and allow their money to compound without fees. So do Warren Buffett (read what he wrote about fees), John Bogle, David Swensen, and other investment industry luminaries. This is because the fees charged by the financial industry, over time, decimate investment returns.

But many people just want investment advice. Most people will spend more time shopping for a car on the weekend to save $1000, than to understand the true cost of the investment advice they are receiving on the nest egg that they're spending their entire working lives building. If you must, here are some tips that I think will help you minimize the damage and give you a shot at having a successful relationship with your stock broker, financial adviser or investment manager.

1. Show Me The Fees. If your financial adviser is charging a fee to oversee your investments, he is probably investing your money in mutual funds that also have fees. Ask for a comprehensive list of all the fees you are paying each year including each fund, its fees, and his fees. Try to get these aggregate fees below 2% per year. My friend has a $6 million account with one of the largest four brokers and to make my point, I calculated his mutual fund fees, loads, and fees to his advisor. Last year he paid about $138,000! He is considering switching to index funds and where he would pay $18,000 per year.

2. Get Invoiced. Most financial advisors "debit" your account either in advance of the quarter or month. Ask them to send you an invoice and write them a check. That way you'll stay aware of the cost for these services.

3. Show Me The Commissions. Ask your adviser to disclose the exact amount of commissions, credits or any form of compensation he or she is paid as an incentive for having you invest in a certain financial product like a mutual fund, annuity, or life insurance product. Also ask for the cost of an index fund alternative so that you can understand exactly what it is costing you to be "sold" a particular product and so that you can justify its price in the future.

In his latest Ask Matt column for the USA Today, Matt Krantz, perhaps without even meaning to, gives a young reader a quick lesson in how Wall Street really works. The question: I'm a high school student who is interested in being a stockbroker. What math skills do I need?

This is my response, not Matt's, to that same question: Being a stock broker is not about math! It's about sales! It's about managing to convince your clients (i.e. customers) that they should pay your for advice and trading when they would be far better off sticking their money in index funds and leaving it alone.

Mr. Krantz lets the young man down more gently: "The biggest part of the job is learning how to make connections with people - your prospective clients - learning about their financial goals and selling products that suit them. Most clients don't care if you can calculate the square root of 103.3 in your head. What they care about is whether they like you and believe that you're giving them good advice."

Exactly! It isn't about actually giving them good advice -- good advice would very likely consist of advising clients to fire their broker and do it on their own. Of course, if you're a broker you can't do that.

My advice to the high school student: If you want to be a broker, learn about sales. It's no different than selling used cars. Except most people know not to trust car salesmen.