Morningstar Direct cost: cost of Morningstar Direct, Morningstar Direct pricing per license, and Morningstar Advisor Workstation cost
Every page that ranks for this search quotes the same three numbers, $17,500 for the first user, $11,000 for the second and $9,500 for each one after that. Those numbers are real, but they come from Morningstar's own annual report for 2016, and the company raised them the following year before it stopped publishing a rate card at all. Because Morningstar is listed on Nasdaq, it still has to report Direct's revenue and its license count every quarter, and dividing one by the other gives an audited figure for what the average license actually brings in today.
- 1 THESIS
- 2 EVIDENCE
- 3 BACKTEST
- 4 RISK
- 5 VERDICT
02 EVIDENCE · FUNDAMENTALS
04 RISK · IN PLAIN ENGLISH
Sample scenarios, not a live backtest of what you typed. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Educational analysis only, not financial advice.
In short
Morningstar Direct has no published price today. The figure that circulates, $17,500 for the first user, $11,000 for the second and $9,500 for each additional user, is the US rate card Morningstar printed in its Form 10-K for 2016. The 2017 10-K raised it to $18,000, $11,500 and $9,800, and the 2018 10-K dropped the dollar figures entirely. Morningstar is a public company, though, so it still reports Direct revenue and Direct license counts. For the quarter ended June 30, 2026 it reported $80.4 million of Morningstar Direct revenue and 18,688 licenses, which annualizes to $17,209 of revenue per license, about $1,434 a month. On the like-for-like basis Morningstar used until 2024, average revenue per license rose from $8,846 in 2016 to $11,940 in 2024, a 35% increase, and the company's own filings say 2025 and 2026 growth came from increased revenue per license while the license count stayed flat. Add-on charges were eliminated in 2025 in favor of one license-based price. AgentTrading is not a Morningstar Direct competitor. It is a research and backtesting bench starting at $19 a month, with no execution, no brokerage connection and no personalized advice.
Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational and informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Consult a licensed advisor.
SIDE BY SIDE - PRICING CHECKED SEPTEMBER 16, 2026
What Morningstar sells to a firm, what each piece has been priced at in a public document, and which alternatives will tell you a number before a sales call
Morningstar Direct is one of three Morningstar products a firm might be pricing, and the public figures get mixed up between them. The first three cards are the three Morningstar products, each with the last price Morningstar itself put in writing. The rest are the platforms a firm weighs against Direct, sorted by whether you can find out what they cost without booking a call.
| Tool | Best for | Price (September 16, 2026) | The honest limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Morningstar Direct | Asset managers doing market research, product positioning and competitive analysis, and wealth managers doing manager research, fund selection and model portfolio construction, which is how Morningstar's 10-K describes it | Not published today. Last rate card, 10-K for 2017: $18,000 first user, $11,500 second, $9,800 each additional, US annual fees. Audited average revenue per license $17,209 annualized at June 30, 2026 | The vendor product page returns an HTTP 202 human-verification challenge and zero bytes of content to an automated client, so nothing on it can be read or quoted by a machine. |
| Morningstar Advisor Workstation and Direct Advisory Suite | Advisors at broker-dealers and larger firms whose home office licenses it for them: proposals, investment research and planning on Morningstar data | Not published today. Last rate card, 10-Ks for 2016 and 2017: annual fees of about $3,500 per licensed user for a base configuration, with pricing varying significantly by scope. Revenue $24.5 million in the quarter to June 30, 2026 | Sold to firms rather than to individual advisors. Morningstar counted 175 enterprise clients in 2016 and 232 in the US and Canada in 2021, and stopped reporting a client count after that. |
| Morningstar Investor | An individual investor who wants Morningstar ratings, analyst reports and screening on one login | $249 a year, $199 for the first year, per third-party reporting. 96,791 paid US members at December 31, 2025 per the 10-K | A retail product with no multi-user licensing, no API and none of Direct's institutional reporting, and not something a registered firm can present to clients. |
| FactSet | Portfolio analytics, risk models, estimates and an Excel and API pipeline into a firm's own models | Not published. FactSet's own filings cap the average user at $10,027 of annual subscription value at May 31, 2026. Vendr median contract $25,160 a year | Modular: the workstation is a base and estimates, analytics, feeds and API access are licensed on top, which is why quotes for the same headcount scatter. |
| YCharts | A registered advisory firm that wants fund and stock research with client-ready reports and custodian integrations | Not published. Four tiers, Enterprise, Professional, Presenter and Analyst, on a public plans page with no dollar amounts. Third-party budgeting band $3,600 to $6,000 a seat a year | Bond data, alternatives data, SMAs and Cap Gains Valet are charged extra on every tier including Enterprise, and the Analyst tier lacks the four customization features a firm needs for client-facing output. |
| Koyfin Advisor Core | A small firm whose Direct use is screening, charts, macro and client reporting rather than manager research at institutional depth | $209 a month billed annually, $2,508 a year. Advisor Pro $299 a month. Re-read at source September 10, 2026 | No backtesting at any tier, no Morningstar ratings or analyst research, and a much thinner managed-investment database. |
| AgentTrading | Testing whether a specific, stateable rule has actually worked, which is not what a Morningstar Direct license is bought for | Starter $19 a month, Analyst $49, Pro $129 | Not a fund database: no Morningstar ratings, no manager research, no model portfolio distribution, no client reporting suite, no estimates database. |
Prices are the vendors' public list prices, checked September 16, 2026, and vendors change them. Verify current pricing and capabilities with each vendor before you buy.
Morningstar Direct
Asset managers doing market research, product positioning and competitive analysis, and wealth managers doing manager research, fund selection and model portfolio construction, which is how Morningstar's 10-K describes it
Pricing is per license, and since 2025 Morningstar says it is a single license-based model with no add-on charges, which reverses the 2018 filing that warned add-ons like the Global Risk Model might cost extra. The renewal rate metric is the number to bring to the negotiation: 104% in 2025 means the base paid about 4% more at renewal net of churn, and Morningstar attributes the fall from 106% to license consolidation with existing clients, meaning firms cutting seats. Direct is browser-accessible at direct.morningstar.com since 2025, with AI features, Python code generation and a private capital fund dataset added the same year. The competitors Morningstar names for it in its own 10-K are Bloomberg, eVestment, FactSet's Cognity and SPAR, and LSEG's Eikon. Third-party sites add nothing you can check: Capterra shows Contact vendor for pricing across 278 reviews, and TrustRadius states Direct does not currently have any pricing plans listed.
Morningstar Advisor Workstation and Direct Advisory Suite
Advisors at broker-dealers and larger firms whose home office licenses it for them: proposals, investment research and planning on Morningstar data
This is the product most advisors actually have, and it is why the Direct rate card is the wrong anchor for an advisor budget. The 2016 filing put a base Advisor Workstation seat at about a fifth of a first Direct seat. Direct Advisory Suite launched in January 2025 as the newer advisor interface and its revenue is reported inside Advisor Workstation. An individual advisor cannot usually buy either directly, so the practical question is what your home office pays per head, and that is inside an enterprise contract rather than on any page. Morningstar Office, the practice management product for independent RIAs, was $6,000 per user in the 2016 filing and about $8,000 per firm in 2017. Morningstar announced its retirement in February 2025, with clients moving to SS&C Black Diamond and other platforms, and the sunsetting cost Morningstar Wealth $5.5 million of revenue in the first quarter of 2026 and $5.8 million in the second.
Morningstar Investor
An individual investor who wants Morningstar ratings, analyst reports and screening on one login
Included because a share of the traffic to this search is people who mean this product and not Direct. Morningstar replaced the Premium membership with Morningstar Investor in 2025. It is the right tool for a personal portfolio and the wrong one to compare against a Direct seat, which is roughly seventy times the price and licensed for a different job.
FactSet
Portfolio analytics, risk models, estimates and an Excel and API pipeline into a firm's own models
The most direct institutional comparison, and the other vendor in this category whose average can be checked. FactSet's per-user average is lower than Morningstar Direct's per-license average, $10,027 against $17,209, but the FactSet figure is diluted by feeds and enterprise solutions that no named user sits behind, and by a fast-growing base of cheaper wealth management seats, so the gap between a loaded FactSet workstation and a Direct seat is smaller than those two averages suggest. Morningstar names FactSet's Cognity and SPAR as Direct competitors in its own 10-K.
YCharts
A registered advisory firm that wants fund and stock research with client-ready reports and custodian integrations
The closest advisor-priced substitute for the fund research half of Direct, and the one most small RIAs actually end up choosing between. Its own plans page carries twenty dollar signs and not one is followed by a number. Against Direct, the trade is depth of Morningstar's managed-investment database and ratings for a seat that costs roughly a quarter to a third of the Direct average.
Koyfin Advisor Core
A small firm whose Direct use is screening, charts, macro and client reporting rather than manager research at institutional depth
Included because it is the cheapest platform on this page that publishes every tier on a public page, on both billing terms, without a call. At $2,508 a year it costs about 15% of Direct's average revenue per license. Firms registered as advisers should note that the advisor features start at Advisor Core rather than at the $39 Plus tier most roundups quote.
AgentTrading
Testing whether a specific, stateable rule has actually worked, which is not what a Morningstar Direct license is bought for
The disqualifying facts go first, because they rule us out for most people pricing Direct. We are not a research terminal. What it does is narrow and specific. You state a thesis in plain English, it restates that as an explicit rule and shows you the rule before anything runs, then tests it across 20-plus years of split and dividend adjusted daily data with a 0.1% cost per trade charged by default, plots the result against buy and hold, and stamps a verdict that includes UNDERPERFORMED when the idea loses. Every plan is on the pricing page and starts online. Research and analysis only: no execution, no brokerage connection, no personalized advice.
Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational and informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Consult a licensed advisor.
THE RATE CARD MORNINGSTAR USED TO PUBLISH, AND THE AVERAGE IT STILL HAS TO REPORT
Morningstar Direct revenue, license count and revenue per license, from Morningstar's own 10-K filings and quarterly supplements
The first three columns are Morningstar's own figures. The last column is arithmetic on them and nothing else. Two bases appear, and they are never mixed: through 2024 Morningstar reported Direct revenue on one definition, and from 2025 it added the revenue of Direct's reporting application to the product area and restated 2024 to match. Read the per-license column as revenue per license, not as a rate card: it includes every seat worldwide at whatever discount it carries.
| Period | Morningstar Direct revenue as reported | Direct licenses at period end | Revenue per license, derived | What the same filing says about price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016, Form 10-K filed March 1, 2017 | $110.5 million, 13.8% of consolidated revenue | 12,492 | $8,846 a year, $737 a month | US annual fee of $17,500 for the first user, $11,000 for the second user, $9,500 for each additional user. Approximately 12,500 licensed users worldwide |
| 2017, Form 10-K filed March 1, 2018, the last rate card Morningstar published | $124.4 million, 13.6% of consolidated revenue | 13,884 | $8,960 a year, $747 a month | US annual fee of $18,000 for the first user, $11,500 for the second user, $9,800 for each additional user |
| 2018, Form 10-K filed March 1, 2019, the first without a rate card | $137.9 million, 13.5% of consolidated revenue | 15,033 | $9,173 a year, $764 a month | Pricing is based on the number of licenses purchased. Add-on features, like the advanced Global Risk Model, may incur additional fees |
| 2021, Form 10-K | $173.2 million | 17,421 | $9,942 a year, $829 a month | No dollar figure |
| 2024, on the pre-2025 basis, from the 10-K growth figures | $224.0 million, derived from 2022 revenue of $184.8 million plus the reported growth of $17.1 million in 2023 and $22.1 million in 2024 | 18,761 | $11,940 a year, $995 a month | No dollar figure. Licenses increased 1.1% |
| Fourth quarter 2024, restated on the 2025 basis | $71.6 million for the quarter, $286.4 million annualized | 18,761 | $15,266 a year, $1,272 a month | Restated to include the reporting application, which had not been included in prior periods |
| Fourth quarter 2025, on the 2025 basis | $77.7 million for the quarter, $310.8 million annualized. Full year growth of $19.3 million, or 6.9% | 18,780, flat year over year | $16,550 a year, $1,379 a month | Pricing is simplified to a license-based model that eliminates charges for add-on features. Annual revenue renewal rate approximately 104% in 2025, 106% in 2024 |
| Second quarter 2026, the most recent reported period | $80.4 million for the quarter, $321.6 million annualized, up 8.2%. Trailing four quarters $313.4 million | 18,688, down 0.6% year over year | $17,209 a year, $1,434 a month. On trailing four quarters, $16,770 | Growth reflecting increased revenue per license and expansion with existing clients in reporting solutions. Direct licenses were relatively flat |
| AgentTrading, this site, for comparison | Starter $19 a month, Analyst $49, Pro $129, on the pricing page and bought online | Not applicable | Not applicable | Every plan and every price is public and can be bought without a call |
Four things come out of this table that no page quoting a Morningstar Direct price mentions. The first is that the rate card everyone repeats was never what the average client paid. In 2016, if all 12,492 licenses had paid even the cheapest rate on the card, $9,500, Direct would have booked $118.7 million. It booked $110.5 million, or $8,846 a license, because multi-seat clients negotiate below list and licenses outside the United States are priced lower. The second is the direction. On the like-for-like basis, revenue per license rose 35% between 2016 and 2024, about 3.8% a year compounded, and on the 2025 basis it has risen a further 13% in the six quarters since the fourth quarter of 2024. The third is where that growth comes from. The license count has been within a few hundred of 18,700 since the end of 2022, and it was down 0.6% year over year at June 30, 2026, while Direct revenue grew 8.2%. Morningstar's own words in the 10-Q are increased revenue per license, and its renewal rate metric, which was 104% in 2025 and 106% in 2024, means the existing client base paid more at renewal than the year before, net of cancellations. The fourth is that the 2025 basis change matters when you compare the two halves. The restated fourth quarter of 2024 annualizes to $15,266 per license against $11,940 on the old basis for the same year, so about a quarter of today's per-license figure is reporting-application revenue that used to sit elsewhere, and none of it is a price increase.
Sources: Morningstar, Inc. Forms 10-K for 2016, 2017, 2018, 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025, the Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, and the quarterly supplemental presentations furnished on Form 8-K for the fourth quarter of 2024, the second and fourth quarters of 2025 and the first and second quarters of 2026, all filed with the SEC under CIK 0001289419 and read at sec.gov on September 16, 2026. License counts are Morningstar's, as of each period end. The revenue-per-license column is our arithmetic on Morningstar's reported figures, not a figure Morningstar publishes, and Morningstar discloses no average or typical contract value. Quarterly figures are annualized by multiplying by four. None of this is a quote, and a price Morningstar gives you supersedes everything here. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational and informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Consult a licensed advisor.
WHAT YOU GET - MORNINGSTAR DIRECT COST
Morningstar Direct cost, run on the bench
The number every page quotes is a 2016 rate card, and it was not the last one
The $17,500, $11,000 and $9,500 figures are from Morningstar's Form 10-K for 2016. The 10-K for 2017 raised them to $18,000, $11,500 and $9,800, and the 10-K for 2018 dropped the dollar figures entirely. So the figure in circulation is ten years old and was superseded before it stopped being published. One pricing site labels it the most recent public data and estimates current rates run 15 to 25% higher. Morningstar's own audited figures say the like-for-like average rose 35% between 2016 and 2024 alone.
The rate card was never what the average client paid
In 2016, with 12,492 licenses and a cheapest listed rate of $9,500, Direct would have booked at least $118.7 million if every seat paid the card. It booked $110.5 million, or $8,846 a license. Multi-seat clients negotiate below list, and licenses outside the United States were priced lower, so the card describes a single US seat and not the deal a firm actually signs. The same logic applies today: $17,209 of revenue per license is an average across every seat worldwide, and a first US seat at a small firm sits above it.
Growth is now price, not seats, in Morningstar's own words
Direct licenses have been within a few hundred of 18,700 since the end of 2022 and were down 0.6% year over year at June 30, 2026, while Direct revenue grew 8.2%. The 10-Q attributes the growth to increased revenue per license and expansion with existing clients in reporting solutions. The renewal rate metric, 104% in 2025 and 106% in 2024, means the existing base paid more at renewal than the year before, net of cancellations. Budget for the renewal, not just the first year.
Where we lose, stated plainly
AgentTrading is not a Morningstar Direct competitor and does not replace a fund database, a ratings system, manager research or a client reporting suite. What we do is test one idea you can state in a sentence against 20-plus years of adjusted daily history, with costs charged, and tell you honestly whether it held up.
HOW IT WORKS - 4 STEPS
From a sentence to a stamped verdict
Work out which Morningstar product you are actually pricing
Direct, Advisor Workstation and Morningstar Investor are three products at three price levels, roughly $17,000, $3,500 and $249 in the last figures Morningstar or the market put in writing, and search results mix them freely. An asset manager or a wealth manager doing manager research is pricing Direct. An advisor at a broker-dealer is usually on Advisor Workstation or Direct Advisory Suite, licensed by the home office. An individual is pricing Investor. Confirm which one before you take any figure on this page to a budget meeting.
Anchor to the last published card, then adjust for what the filings show since
The last rate card Morningstar published was $18,000, $11,500 and $9,800 for the first, second and additional US seats, in the 10-K for 2017. On a like-for-like basis, average revenue per license rose 33% between 2017 and 2024. If the card moved with the average, a purely illustrative uplift would put a first seat near $24,000, a second near $15,300 and each additional seat near $13,100. That is arithmetic, not a quote, and the real number depends on seat count, region and what Morningstar counts as a base configuration, but it is a better starting point than a ten-year-old figure.
Ask for the renewal uplift in writing, because the filings say there is one
Morningstar reports an annual revenue renewal rate for Direct of approximately 104% in 2025 and 106% in 2024, and describes 2025 and 2026 growth as coming from increased revenue per license while the license count stayed flat. A renewal rate above 100% is the existing base paying more the following year, net of the firms that left. Ask what the year-two and year-three rates are, whether they are capped, and what happens to the per-seat rate if you consolidate licenses, since that consolidation is what Morningstar says pulled its own renewal rate down.
Price what the license does not cover before you sign
A Direct license answers what Morningstar knows about a fund, a manager or a model portfolio. It does not tell you whether a rule you want to follow has worked across two decades of daily data, and it does not turn a client's scanned statements into data. Both of those are separate line items in practice, and firms routinely discover them after the contract is signed. List them, cost them, and then decide how much of the research budget the seat should take.
Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational and informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Consult a licensed advisor.
On the same bench
Morningstar is the second terminal vendor whose silence can be checked against an audited document. The first is FactSet, which files its subscription value and user count every quarter, and FactSet cost runs that arithmetic period by period. The vendors that file nothing are covered too: Bloomberg Terminal cost traces why the public figures for a Terminal disagree by about $8,000 a seat, Bloomberg Anywhere subscription cost works through the two ways Bloomberg counts a license, and Capital IQ cost reconstructs a per-user figure from the few real contracts that are public. YCharts pricing covers the advisor platform that publishes a feature matrix and no number, and Koyfin pricing shows the one that puts every tier on a public page. Morningstar names LSEG's Eikon as a Direct competitor, and LSEG Workspace pricing bounds that vendor from its own reports as well. If the reason you are pricing Direct is a registered firm's research workflow, investment research software and Bloomberg Terminal alternative for financial advisors price each option at the tier a firm is permitted to buy, and the testing step none of these platforms covers is on backtesting software for financial advisors. The whole category, from $19 a month to a six-figure contract, is sorted in how much stock analysis software costs. If what you are really pricing is a personal research subscription rather than a Direct seat, Value Line subscription cost covers the other long-standing retail service, which publishes its retail prices and spells out who it treats as a professional client.
QUESTIONS - ASKED AND ANSWERED
Morningstar Direct cost: the common questions
How much does Morningstar Direct cost?
Morningstar does not publish a Direct price today. The last rate card it put in writing, in its Form 10-K for 2017, was an annual US fee of $18,000 for the first user, $11,500 for the second and $9,800 for each additional user. Its most recent filings report $80.4 million of Direct revenue and 18,688 licenses for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, which annualizes to $17,209 of revenue per license, about $1,434 a month, as an average across every seat worldwide.
Is the $17,500 first-user price for Morningstar Direct still accurate?
No. That figure, with $11,000 for the second user and $9,500 for each additional user, is the US rate card in Morningstar's Form 10-K for 2016. The 2017 10-K raised it to $18,000, $11,500 and $9,800, and the 2018 10-K removed the dollar figures. Since then Morningstar's audited average revenue per license has risen 35% on a like-for-like basis through 2024 and further since, so the 2016 card understates today's price.
How much does Morningstar Direct cost per license per year?
The audited average is $17,209 a year at June 30, 2026, from $80.4 million of quarterly Direct revenue annualized and divided by 18,688 licenses, or $16,770 on the trailing four quarters. That is an average across every seat worldwide, including multi-seat discounts and lower-priced regions, so a single US seat at a small firm will sit above it and a tenth seat at a large firm below it. Morningstar's last published first-seat rate was $18,000 in 2018.
Does Morningstar publish Morningstar Direct pricing?
Not since the Form 10-K for 2017, filed March 1, 2018. The 10-K for 2018 replaced the dollar figures with the statement that pricing is based on the number of licenses purchased and that add-on features may incur additional fees. The 10-K for 2025 says pricing is now a single license-based model that eliminates charges for add-on features. The vendor product page cannot be read by an automated client at all: it returns an HTTP 202 human-verification challenge and no content. Checked September 16, 2026.
How much does Morningstar Direct cost per month?
There is no monthly Morningstar Direct plan, so any monthly figure is an annual license divided by twelve. On the audited average of $17,209 per license a year that is about $1,434 a month. On the last published first-seat rate of $18,000 it is $1,500 a month, and on the last published additional-seat rate of $9,800 it is about $817. All of these are annual commitments rather than plans you can cancel month to month.
How much does Morningstar Advisor Workstation cost?
Morningstar's 10-Ks for 2016 and 2017 said it typically charged annual fees of about $3,500 per licensed user for a base configuration of Advisor Workstation, with pricing varying significantly by scope. It publishes no figure today. Advisor Workstation, which now includes Direct Advisory Suite, is sold to firms rather than to individual advisors, brought in $24.5 million in the quarter to June 30, 2026, and Morningstar counted 232 enterprise clients in the US and Canada in 2021, the last year it reported that number.
Why is Morningstar Direct revenue growing if licenses are flat?
Because the price per license is rising. Direct licenses were 18,421 at the end of 2022 and 18,688 at June 30, 2026, down 0.6% year over year, while Direct revenue grew 8.2% in the same quarter. Morningstar's 10-Q attributes the growth to increased revenue per license and expansion with existing clients in reporting solutions. Its renewal rate metric of 104% in 2025 and 106% in 2024 confirms the existing base paid more at renewal than the year before.
Does Morningstar Direct charge for add-ons?
Not since 2025, according to Morningstar. The 10-K for 2018 said add-on features like the advanced Global Risk Model may incur additional fees. The 10-K for 2025 says pricing is simplified to a license-based model that eliminates charges for add-on features. The same filing added the revenue of Direct's reporting application to the product area, which is why the per-license figure jumped between the old and new reporting bases without any price increase behind that part of it.
Is Morningstar Direct the same as Morningstar Investor or Premium?
No. Morningstar Investor is the retail membership that replaced Premium in 2025, at $249 a year by third-party reporting, with 96,791 paid US members at the end of 2025 per the 10-K. Morningstar Direct is the institutional platform for asset and wealth managers, licensed per seat at an audited average of $17,209 a year. They share the underlying database and almost nothing else, and a registered firm cannot present Investor output to clients.
Is Morningstar Direct worth it for a small advisory firm?
It depends which part you would use. If the work is manager research, fund selection and model portfolio construction on Morningstar's ratings and managed-investment data, there is no cheap substitute and the seat earns its money. If the work is screening, charts and client reporting, platforms that publish their prices cover that for $2,508 a year, and YCharts covers the advisor reporting half for a third-party band of $3,600 to $6,000. Price the screens you open daily, not the platform, and remember most advisors at larger firms are on Advisor Workstation, which Morningstar last priced at about $3,500 a seat.
Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational and informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Consult a licensed advisor.
Your next idea deserves a verdict, not a hunch.
Bring a thesis or a ticker. AgentTrading restates the rule, shows the evidence, runs 20+ years of history, and stamps an honest verdict. You decide.
Past performance does not guarantee future results. For educational and informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Consult a licensed advisor.