I'm here to free you up from that awkward moment at the cocktail party when you ask the guy next to you what he does for a living and he responds, "I'm a financial advisor."  After 18 years as a financial advisor I've learned to embrace that awkward silence when the person I'm talking to pauses momentarily, presumably waiting for me to solicit their business.  The financial industry has created this phenomenon for itself by focusing more on product sales and stock market prediction than good solid advice.  Fortunately, our society has come up with a clever way to break that silence in the form of a question.  "What's the stock market going to do? "