Gaining an Edge – Understanding Factors
What Are Factors? Factors are characteristics common to a group of securities that help explain their returns. These characteristics are distinct and quantifiable and give rise to similar patterns of performance among the securities within the group that distinguish them from other securities over t
Fees and Expenses: Do They Really Matter?
Fees Eat Up Return Fees and expenses are two of the most important factors to consider when investing. You can’t control the direction of the financial markets, but you can control what you pay to invest. Every mutual fund or exchange traded fund (ETF) in your portfolio has what’s called an “i
Marketing Timing May be Hazardous to Your Portfolio’s Health
An Elusive Dream The stock market goes up and the stock market goes down, as you can see below. Over time the trend is strongly upward, but there have been significant market declines along the way. Growth of the U.S. Stock Market 1926-2019 US Stock Market as represented by the Ibbotson SBBI
There’s a growing gap between what we know and what we feel. We know that avoiding panic and staying in place is the best strategy during turbulent markets. History shows that patient investors are always rewarded, and market timing is a futile exercise. Yet our emotions tell us it’s time to
Should You Be Worried About the Stock Market’s Fringe Players?
We recently ran across an article about a little corner of the Internet known as “r/WSB.” It’s where a modern-day version of day-traders hang out to share ideas, brag about their conquests, and sometimes try to move the market to their advantage. Here’s a link to the article: The a
You Can Act Like a Fiduciary Regardless of What the Law Says
Reg BI has now been birthed and with it a maelstrom of emotion and controversy. Fiduciary advocates are wearing black and flying their flags at half-mast. They see Reg BI as a sell-out of the individual investors the SEC was created to protect and a knife in the back of the fiduciary RIA community.
A New Series of Portfolios to Give You More Options
On April 1st (no fooling) we launched a new series of portfolios—the Factor Select portfolios. We created them in response to advisors who wanted our best ideas about how to build low cost, factor-based portfolios. A lot of work and research went into their design and we proudly offer them to give
TAMP Users: Watch Out for This Fiduciary Landmine
TAMP users beware! There is a disturbing trend in our industry that may get you in trouble with the regulators if you’re not careful. Everything Was Fine Until… It all started innocently enough. In the “early days” (early 1990s) there weren’t many TAMPs, and their investment offerings
Building Your Own Piece of the Future – Client Profiling
“You better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone for the times they are a changin’.” –Bob Dylan Last time we talked about how technology is changing the game for advisors. To sum up, in the future, the traditional cornerstones of your value proposition like investment managemen
Building Your Own Piece of the Future – Technology
“You better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone for the times they are a changin’.” –Bob Dylan You have no need to fear the future, but you better be prepared for it. Failure to adapt to the changes that are taking place today will cause your business to sink like a stone tomo
Stop the Dangerous Notion That Asset Management is Commoditized
This article also appears in the Journal of Financial Planning: Practice Management Blog. The emergence of low-cost investment solutions like robo-advisers and model marketplaces has elicited statements by earnest pundits about the “commoditization” of asset management. These well-meaning observ
The annual tsunami of prognostications about how the stock market and the economy will perform in 2018 was beginning to slow to a trickle, thankfully. Then the stock market had a major hiccup and the punditry scrambled back to its soap boxes to give us another dose. Their explanations about why the
This is the time of year when the gurus share their predictions and prognostications for the coming year. It is also the time of year when the media reports on how poorly the gurus fared in predicting and prognosticating about the events of the past year. The story is the same every year. As a
A Surefire Way to Better Serve Your Clients and Build a Stronger Practice
Do you want to differentiate your firm from the competition, while adding value to your client relationships? Focus attention on an area that is ignored by most advisors: client profiling. Because few advisors even think of this as an area where they might add value, it presents you with a great o
The Benefits of Outsourcing: Part 2
Last month, we looked at how outsourcing the investment management can help reduce overhead costs and help you build credibility in your investment offering. This month, we’re going to look at how outsourcing can help you buy back a part of your day so you can focus on the parts of your job that t
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There’s a growing gap between what we know and what we feel.
