OG 2017 Q707 Not trusting themselves

barksdale wrote:Not trusting themselves to choose wisely among the wide array of investment opportunities on the market, stockbrokers are helping many people who turn to them to buy stocks that could be easily bought directly.

A) stockbrokers are helping many people who turn to them to buy stocks that could be easily
B) stockbrokers are helping many people who are turning to them for help in buying stocks that they could easily have
C) many people are turning to stockbrokers for help from them to buy stocks that could be easily
D) many people are turning to stockbrokers for help to buy stocks that easily could have been
E) many people are turning to stockbrokers for help in buying stocks that could easily be

Looking for a breakdown of process. Thank you.

The process is that you start by reading the initial sentence, looking for the specific errors that GMAT test writers like to insert. In this case, the introductory phrase is a modifier that contains a pronoun. Who or what don't trust themselves to choose wisely? The stockbrokers or many people?

Once you have identified an error in the first sentence, eliminate all other sentences that contain the same error. In this case, answer choices A and B can be eliminated.

Once that is done, we can look at the remaining choices to see the differences between them and to eliminate further. Answer choice C, with the phrase "turning to stockbrokers for help from them" is surely redundant. The phrase "from them" can be eliminated with no loss of meaning.

Once we have reduced to two, the shorter of the two answers is likely to be the best one. This should establish (E) as your leading contender. But wait... don't we say "Help me do (or to do) my homework?" Yes, but that is when help is used as a verb. After help as a noun, we should use the preposition in.

Additionally, we can note that the sentence is the present tense. As such the phrase "could have bought" doesn't go well. I also note that the adverb "easily" is misplaced in sentence (D).