(New York)

New academic analysis has found part of the full cost of the DOL rule on the financial sector. A group of academics analyzed the market cap movements of the top 30 brokerage and fund providers and found that, in aggregate, the DOL rule cost firms $14 bn of market cap. That figure does not include the money spent to prepare for the rule, just changes in share valuation that directly resulted form the rule. However, the same firms have since benefitted strongly from the so-called Trump Effect.

FINSUM: The DOL rule ended up being an enormous waste of time that in hindsight appears to have been doomed from the beginning. We will say that its lasting effect was to bring consciousness of fiduciary duty to the wider public.