Signs your advisor is churning your money, not growing it

You hand money to an advisor and expect it to work harder. Instead, you notice your account looks busy—lots of trades, regular switches between funds—but your balance isn't moving the way they promised. The bigger problem: you're paying fees on all that activity, and the activity itself might be the income stream your advisor is actually chasing. This is churning, and spotting it matters because by the time you notice, months or years of returns may already be gone.

Churning isn't always crude. A dishonest advisor rarely says "I'll trade your money to rack up commissions." Instead, they reframe constant activity as "keeping your portfolio optimised" or "responding to market conditions." Meanwhile, every trade is a fee in their pocket—whether it's a commission on the transaction, a trailing fee tied to assets under management, or both. The advisor profits most when your money moves, not when it stays put and compounds. If your portfolio is active by design, that should match *your* stated goals and timeline. If it doesn't, you're funding their earnings, not your retirement.

Spotting the red flags in your statements

The clearest signal is frequency. A long-term investor building wealth shouldn't see multiple trades every month. Compare your activity to your written investment mandate: did you agree to active trading, or did the advisor recommend a strategic allocation and quarterly reviews? If they're trading more than that story justifies, ask why. A legitimate answer explains how the trades serve *your* goals. Evasion—"It's just prudent management" or "Markets require constant tweaking"—is a warning.

Watch the direction of trades too. Churning often involves switching between similar funds or jumping in and out of the same asset class. If your advisor is selling a balanced fund at a loss to buy another balanced fund weeks later, or trading between bond funds repeatedly, the trades are unlikely to benefit you and almost certain to benefit them. Real rebalancing—selling what has outperformed and buying what has fallen behind—has a logic tied to your risk profile. Random swaps do not.

Fees compound the damage. Each trade attracts costs: a platform fee, a brokerage charge, or a commission paid to the advisor. On a R100,000 portfolio turned over monthly, those fees add up fast. Over five years of unnecessary activity, you could lose 15% or more to costs alone. Worse, every trade crystallises gains and losses, creating a tax bill that a buy-and-hold strategy would have deferred. If your advisor hasn't discussed tax efficiency or how fees eat into returns, that's another signal they're optimising for their pocket, not yours.

What a clean portfolio actually looks like

A portfolio that serves your needs has a clear structure tied to your goal and time horizon. A 35-year-old saving for retirement at 65 needs a different mix than someone withdrawing in five years. That mix shouldn't change every quarter unless *your* circumstances have shifted—a job loss, a windfall, or a change in risk tolerance. When it does change, the trades should reflect it directly: if you decide you can't stomach volatility, you move from stocks to bonds. You don't shuffle between similar funds and call it growth.

Legitimate advisors review holdings annually or semi-annually, not weekly. They can explain every holding in your portfolio and why it's there. They discuss fees upfront and show you how they compound. They track performance against a benchmark suited to your risk level and investment period. If your advisor resists showing you this—won't itemise fees, can't name your holdings, won't compare your returns to a relevant index—that's a signal to start looking elsewhere.

Start by asking for a full breakdown: every trade in the past year, the cost of each trade, and the business rationale. If they can't or won't produce it, or if the rationale rings hollow, it's time to get a second opinion. Many advisors will review a portfolio for free and won't mind the comparison. Finding someone who genuinely aligns their interests with yours isn't complex—it starts with seeing the trades they make and asking whether those trades help you or just help them. Services like Strove let you compare advisors and their track records side by side, so you can spot whose portfolio approach actually matches the story they're telling.