Michael Lewis ranks as one of the most trenchant observers of Wall Street today, as his books Liar's Poker and The Big Short amply evidence. So, it is with great interest we learned was been duped into buying some toxic assets that had been recommended by a large brokerage firm.

"The stock market is not necessarily rigged against individual investors. But if you're listening to what brokers are telling you, they're shading the odds against you rather than for you," he tells Yahoo! Finance.

But why? The big firms have evolved since the 1980s, "away from servicing the customer and maintaining nice, happy relations with the customer to managing friction with the customer on behalf of the firms' traders. There's an inherent conflict of interest and you're not likely to come out of it well if you're on the other side of the desk," he says.

Individual investors are likely to get a fairer shake in the stock market than in the bond market, however. "The bond market I'd say is generally rigged against the individual investors. But there's a caveat. It's rigged to the extent that Wall Street firms know what they're doing. And in the last four or five years we had this episode where these Wall Street firms created a poker table where they were the fools, and as a customer you could actually do quite well being on the other side of trades from them."

Lewis presents an interesting take. You better hope your broker isn't all that smart.

For more:
- here's the article

Related Articles:
Retail investors permanently soured on stocks?
Retail complaints against banks soar
Retail customers stream into bonds, avoid stocks
Risky investment aimed at more investors