“Dear Wilfred, I invested in an investment instrument one year ago from J. I took the full responsibility to invest in this product on my own. After one year, I checked my statement, I was furious that I have lost X% in value. I am unhappy that the J did not advice me to sell. Regards –M”

Dear M,

There appear to be some mismatch of expectations.

First, since you said that you took full responsibility to invest in this product on your own, it implied that you selected “no advice” or merely “product advice.” Under such choice, the financial adviser will not be require to make recommendation according to what is suitable to you since you provided no information to the adviser to analyze. Therefore, it is only right to say that J did not “ask” you to sell when there are losses as there were no basis to “sell.”

Second, if you sought the advice of the adviser to monitor your investments, you should consider whether this is written in black and white. If there is no agreement to monitor your investments, there will no on-going advice. Usually if there is a written agreement to monitor your investments, you will be required to pay an on-going fee to do so. One of an important point in contract law is that there should be a "consideration" (money). If there was no consideration, there is no contract.

I sense that you may have misunderstood how the financial industry works – if you only purchase product – this is considered a one-off transaction. If you need on-going service, this has to be agreed separately.