Strong. (Specifically, "strong enough to alienate some people who would otherwise agree with you".) I hope they all see the error of their ways and change their minds. We'll both be disappointed, admittedly: my hope for them is no more realistic than yours. There is, though, also an argument that the buying public gets the vendors it deserves. They do it because people want to buy it. Repeatedly, in many cases.
Have anyone run into financial advisors that are border line scammers. Selling mutual funds, being paid by mutual fund company and charging management fees?
The whole mutual fund industry is a scam too. 95% underperform their index benchmarks but charge fees. But at least they don't lie about their performance and about being "pro traders". I despise the deception and fraud aspect of the trading education "industry".
Retail traders are desperate to find something, anything that works. They're not looking to get scammed. I don't think anyone deserves to get scammed.
Yup - that's the counter-argument (to the "the public gets the vendors it deserves" argument), and there's validity there, too, undoubtedly. My point (if I had one at all, which is never a certainty) is simply that it's a free market, and it's complicated, and there are a lot of gray areas too, and there are some "good guys" among the vendors, and there's a whole range of stuff around - much of it very scammy, I agree, though I honestly think your figure of 99.99% is a big exaggeration. If you'd said 80-90%, I wouldn't be nitpicking you. (By the way, those Bugattis wouldn't get over the speed-bumps in my street.)