To understand the importance of involving both spouses in the discussion, we asked our very own Vicky Frye, Director of FinTech Innovation and Cybersecurity Strategies at WMGNA, for her comments on this topic.
In the best-case scenario, subscription services are the heir apparent for the delivery of wealth management services because they bestow the greatest amount of flexibility on the advisor to help their clients achieve comprehensive and lasting financial security.
Take this little “acid” test, and you will know if a subscription model could work for your practice.
If Mike Tyson were speaking to a group of investors, what he may have been saying is that everyone has a financial plan until life throws a “punch.”
Investors have been underweight Japan for decades, but conditions on the ground have changed meaningfully. Amid improving fundamentals and governance reforms, we believe it’s time to close the gap and take advantage of the attractive opportunity among small-to-mid cap Japanese companies.
Japan has been stuck in a low growth, low inflation (and at times, deflationary) environment.
Sanctions on Russia’s foreign currency reserves will likely stymie the rise of the Chinese renminbi as a competitor to the U.S. dollar.
Most global equity managers today are underweight Japan.
President Joe Biden is proposing to eliminate “stepped-up basis” on property transferred at death.
Natural herd immunity in predominantly young emerging markets populations looks set to offset slower vaccine rollouts, setting the stage for a resurgence in economic growth.
Global stocks and bonds are both expensive. U.S. stocks are trading at particularly elevated valuations with the CAPE ratio standing at 35x (vs. a 10-year average of less than 27x) while the Barclays Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate index offered a negative real yield at the end of February.
China’s economy should see a soft landing as stimulus is reduced, but the drag on global growth may place a burden on developed economies to keep stimulus taps open for longer.
A majority of the Senate (including two Democrats) has agreed to forego efforts to eliminate the filibuster during the Congressional term ending December 2022.
A confluence of dynamics are set to accelerate global capital flows to emerging markets amid attractive valuations.
With a COVID-19 vaccine rolling out and markets enjoying a post-election relief rally, credit investors may be asking “is there any opportunity left?”
The third generation of financial planning mathematical infrastructure has emerged, which incorporates additional variables to more realistically reflect potential future outcomes.
As the party conventions conclude and the general election campaign begins, the national polls lean toward Democrat Joe Biden. But presidents are determined by the Electoral College, not by popular vote.
The tumultuous environment illustrates why a risk tolerance assessment exercise inspires confidence in clients.
In a new white paper, GMO Credit Opportunities Strategy co-PM Jeff Friedman looks at the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented actions in the corporate credit market amid the COVID-19 pandemic and highlights an area of the market where investors might capture attractive opportunities.
If the virus in fact becomes a national crisis, it might have a bearing on how a segment of voters decides whether to support the President in any of three ways...
While the passive balanced portfolio (60% stock/40% bond) has outperformed more diversified allocations over the last decade, we believe investors should temper their expectations for a repeat. Two key problems lie ahead for such a portfolio.
In prioritizing stability over all other objectives, China is borrowing from future growth while reducing policy ammunition to counter future shocks.
In a new GMO Insights piece titled “Emerging Market Stocks: Getting Comfortable with the Uncomfortable,” asset allocation team member Rick Friedman looks at how lackluster emerging market equity returns in recent years have led many investors to write off the asset class, but GMO “humbly suggest(s) investors get more comfortable owning the uncomfortable.”
For almost 1-1/2 years, President Trump’s tariff initiative has confused and roiled the markets. The following discussion examines why markets have been volatile and makes some predictions about future market reactions.
The market consequences of direct intervention by the U.S. could be substantial and thus bear consideration.
The duration and magnitude of value’s recent underperformance has caused many to ask once again if value investing is no longer effective. While it is possible that secular shifts have helped to compress value’s premium relative to its long-term history, we believe most of the recent decline can be traced to more transitory factors.
Our last tax update, Tax Reform Aftermath: New Guidance for Investors, discussed in part the steps small business owners might take to claim and maximize the 20% deduction afforded by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Since we wrote that paper, the IRS has clarified the application of the provisions that govern these strategies.
While we are constructive on the prospects for emerging markets in the year ahead, we think the real potential lies in individual country and thematic opportunities.
Since the beginning of 2018, the government funding imbroglio has consumed Washington. With a second government shutdown looming, the two parties finally compromised on legislation funding the government through September, an eon away by congressional standards.
In recent months China has rolled out tax cuts and incentives to boost consumption over investment while taking steps to further open its capital markets – a shift in approach that seems to accept a natural slowing in growth over time and to acknowledge the costs of an overreliance on credit growth.
The new year begins as the prior year ended – with the federal government shut down and no compromise in sight. Of course, the government will reopen at some point, likely when the average American gets tired of dealing with the lack of government services.
The incoming Mexican government’s costly plan to cancel the new Mexico City airport has fueled concerns that President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador will enact a populist agenda and squander the country’s sound financial position.
The 2018 Midterms are over, and the messages are mixed. As we predicted, the Republicans held the Senate, while Democrats took the House by a lesser margin than some others expected.
One truism spanning the last three decades has been that emerging markets are a leveraged play on global growth – often outperforming when developed markets (DM) are growing but susceptible to sharp downturns when DM conditions are less favorable.
The different and constantly changing polls make it difficult at this point to reach a definitive conclusion regarding the midterm election results. Moreover, future events – particularly those occurring in late October and November – almost certainly will have an outsized influence on the outcome.
There are large swaths of the financial planning landscape that can – and should – be both automated and integrated in such a way to which robo advisors aspire, but do not yet currently deliver.
Forecasting currency performance is like predicting the outcome of a horse race. Currencies move up the field and then fall back depending on their respective country conditions. And once in a great while, a very strong contender dominates the field – much like the winner of the Triple Crown.
In an environment in which interest rates have been steadily rising — the 10-year US Treasury yield has moved up almost 75 basis points since its recent low in September 2017 — one question that investors face is the potential effect of this phenomenon on equity sectors. Which sectors might be winners or losers in a rising rate environment?
Last week, the SEC issued proposed rules governing broker-dealer and investment advisor conduct. The rules serve as a counterpoint to the fiduciary rules issued by the Department of Labor.
Investing requires bearing risk to reap rewards, but there is no definitive causal relationship here. Just because you might be willing to pack up your wagon and head off into the sunset doesn’t ensure you’ll be rewarded with wealth. Today investors should be particularly diligent in assessing risk before setting off on any journey.
In our first written update of the Trump presidency, in January 2017, we sounded a theme about the interaction of President Trump’s policies and the markets that we continue to espouse through our presentations today.
During the second most significant repricing in U.S. Treasury bond yields since 2013, emerging market debt has so far significantly outperformed equity, oil and U.S. Treasury beta.
With a steady repricing of global bond markets having contributed to a sharp plunge in global stock markets, there could be a whiff of a new era in the air.
After a strong run in emerging markets through the first nine months of 2017, a recent performance setback in local bond markets has led some investors to fear that the recovery cycle may be short-circuiting. Is the two-month run of underperformance in EM local markets an opportunity or a canary in a coal mine?
In our white paper, Tax Reform Near the Finish Line: What’s in the Bill, we summarize the portions of the Tax Cuts & Jobs bill of particular interest to investors, as well as the likely winners and losers under that legislation.
A small group of technology stocks have recently delivered stellar returns. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet (Google), the so-called “FAANG” stocks, are up 36% on average year to date through September. This superlative performance, in such a narrow group of large cap names, has led many to raise questions about the current valuation of the S&P 500, its sector composition, and comparisons to other markets.
Three new health care reform initiatives - from the political right, left, and center - are developing in the Senate. Earlier this week I joined CNBC's Nightly Business Report to discuss the proposal up first for consideration: the Graham-Cassidy bill, which would turn the ACA into a system of state grants.
The use of credit to fuel growth in China is weakening, a trend that has begun to depress demand for imports. Given China’s seminal role as an engine of global growth, the ripple effects will weigh on growth prospects for the countries most exposed to Chinese demand, including those in Asia and Latin America.
Bond investors are from Mars, and central bankers are from Venus – or so suggests the bond market’s negative reaction to signals that the exceptional monetary policy accommodation of the last decade is winding down. Risk-asset markets, however, are ignoring the red flags that the bond markets are waving. Are they right?
Five years ago this week, Mario Draghi’s landmark “whatever it takes” speech turned the tide of the euro crisis, the president effectively clarifying the European Central Bank’s role as a conditional lender of last resort to eurozone sovereign borrowers.
