A new feature here at About.com is called User Answers, which facilitates the exchange of knowledge between readers. I get a lot of inquiries from people who are interested in becoming financial advisors. Those of you who are in the field, who used to be, or who are trying get started in it have a wealth of valuable experiences that would be of immense help to your fellow readers. Would you mind taking some time to share your insights with your fellow readers? Many, many thanks for your time!

Another intriguing experiment by Duncan Watts reported in the Pennsylvania Gazette is designed to test whether superstar pop musicians owe their success largely to talent or to sheer luck.

Watts set up a website with a collection of new, unknown songs. Visitors could listen to the collection and download their favorites, all for free. Some listeners got to see stats on how many times each song had been downloaded previously, others did not. Members of the former pool showed a clear herd instinct: the choices of early respondents seemed to have a strong influence on those who chose later. Watts repeated the experiment eight times and the same pattern emerged.

Rather than an example of how luck can trump talent, I'd say that this experiment says a lot about how early successes or good first impressions can pay huge dividends further down the line, for people, companies and products alike.

I'm reminded of my experience in high school forensics. Judges tended to be overly-generous in scoring competitors who had established track records as winners. You see much the same thing in sports. In baseball, for example, whether the umpire calls a pitch on the border of the strike zone a ball or a strike often depends on who the hitter is. If he's a star with a reputation for having a "good eye," it'll likely be called a ball. If not, a pitch in exactly the same spot may be called a strike. You see this time and again.

Lesson: get off to a good start at whatever you do, and you are likely to make your own luck in the future.

Does higher pay ensure better performance? Columbia University sociology professor Duncan Watts ran an experiment that mimics Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk service. He determined that higher pay does indeed motivate people to do more work, but not necessarily better work. The addition of a bonus tied to accuracy had no measurable impact. Indeed, the bonus seemed to encourage those already doing poor work to crank out yet more substandard output. The July/August Pennsylvania Gazette carries a full story on this experiment.

I suspect that Watts failed to incorporate adequate feedback mechanisms into his experiment, however. Like a real manager, did he issue warnings to those doing subpar work? Did he tell them that they were in danger of losing their jobs, let alone their chances for earning bonuses? If he did not, as the article seems to imply, the experiment is seriously flawed.

Meanwhile, Citigroup is joining the ranks of those major financial firms raising base pay in response to the political heat over bonuses.

A combination of individual investors and established securities firms are seeking to profit from California IOUs. As you may know, the state has run out of money with which to pay its bills, and has resorted to issuing IOUs. The IOUs are supposed to be redeemed in cash by October 2 and pay interest at a 3.75% annual rate. Since they are bearer instruments, they can be traded. Holders who are either in urgent need of cash now, or who have serious doubts about the state's ability to make good on these promises, are already selling these IOUs at discounts to their face value. There's already some brisk online trading in the IOUs, and more formal secondary markets are being established by some financial firms. This is per a report in the July 6 Financial Times.

In the same issue is an article about a Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study of the fund management industry. We've already noted how institutional investors, unhappy with big losses, are making noises. The BCG report predicts that there will be a great deal of belt-tightening in the sector, with headcount reductions of about 15% and pay cuts averaging 30% over the next few years. Watch out.