Thanks for sharing, it's always interesting to me to see what "advisers" do on the other side of the curtain. My key takeaway from this is that RULE #1, which they hammer into the skulls of students on the first day of DUMB ADVISER 101, must be:
#1: NEVER PUT YOUR CLIENT IN FEWER THAN 10 FUNDS!!!!
I threw a bunch of these into Morningstar, they barely differ at all in performance, and I'm sure they hold many of the same underlying bonds.
There is no financial reason to hold so many different funds, but every single adviser portfolio I've seen has at least this many funds, so they must put it in as Rule #1 so that their client thinks that they are "doing something".
It's almost a simple way to answer the question "is my adviser any good?" Just ask "do they have you in more than five funds in a single account?" If so, then no, they aren't any good.
I would just love to pepper an adviser with questions: "Why am I 5% in Nuveen California Municipal Bond Fund, and only 4% in Oppenheimer California Municipal Bond Fund? Shouldn't those be reversed? That allocation is going to lead me to financial doom! Please explain to me how you arrived at those percentages, because any dumbass knows it should be 4% in Oppenheimer and 5% in Nuveen!!!"
So dumb. But yeah, probably not egregiously damaging at this point, so, whatever!