The Mass Affluent: People with between $100,000 and $1 million to invest-produce more brokerage...

The news Lately has been all about the high-net-worth investor and the attention that advisers are paying to him, with his multimillion dollar brokerage account and promise of high fees. But there are only so many such clients, and most brokers build practices not around the rich investors but around those in the middle.

"The mass-affluent market is the core business of the wirehouse," says Chip Roame, managing principal at consulting firm Tiburon Strategic Advisors. Such investors-generally defined as people with between $100,000 and $1 million to invest-account for ab