Read Harold Evensky's latest Newsletter.
The CFP Board wants its credentials to be a mandatory requirement for all advisers who hold themselves out as financial planners. If its lobbying efforts to this end are successful, the Board would then become the de facto regulator of the financial planning profession, which is the organization’s goal. But the Board’s disingenuous position on the fiduciary standard and its long history of putting its own interests ahead of those of consumers and its members make the Board decidedly unfit for this role.
At Smead Capital Management, we want to avoid excitement and expense in the marketplace. When a sector of the stock market gets white hot, there are usually a few stocks which dominate the market activity and see explosive price appreciation. We like to think that one of them becomes the thermometer of the market, in effect showing the temperature of the stock market.
My good friend Marc Lichtenfeld from the Oxford Club has always been savvy in following such strategies. I invite you to learn from his investment journey in this special Q&A.
Munis may offer U.S. taxpayers key benefits as they contemplate the end of the economic expansion.
The car you drive isn’t just a status symbol. In the age of digital communication, Bluetooth and wired vehicles, advisors can use their cars to drive leads by converting boring downtime during a commute into active prospecting.
Stocks hit the ground running to start the second half of 2018.
Having a beard is a great way to set yourself apart and grow your business.
The belief that detailed quantitative measurement will make performance easier to evaluate, manage efficiently, and improve has survived repeated failures of the doctrine. In fact, the failures serve only to bring forth calls for more of the treatment. Only very rarely is it admitted that quantification doesn’t work and should be scrapped.
The number of publicly listed companies in the U.S. has fallen steadily since 1997. More companies have delisted, in fact, than gone public in every year of the past 20 years except one, 2013. Put another way, the pool is getting smaller even while the population and economy are expanding.
Portfolio managers Dan Ivascyn and Alfred Murata discuss the impact of higher market volatility and how they are positioning the Income Strategy for change ahead.
We don’t know how long ago we met Frederick “Shad” Rowe, but we are glad we did, because our conversations with him have been net worth changing.
This week I have something special for you: an update of “The Distribution of Pain,” one of 2017’s most popular letters. I say “popular” just in terms of feedback and reprint requests. It was thought-provoking but also sobering. I started with the original version, re-edited to clarify a few points, and added some new comments. It is still a timely, important topic.
JGBs: Canary in the coal mine?
A question I’m often asked involves the merits of investing in private real estate as an alternative to publicly available REITs. To answer that question, I will turn to the historical evidence.
A landmark study looked back at more than 100 years of data and 23 countries to determine if there are reasons to believe the cross-sectional patterns in factor returns will persist, or whether they were just anomalies that tended to disappear after publication.
When you think of the top 1 percent of all income earners in American households, how much do you think this group rakes in? Millions? Tens of millions? What about the top 10 percent?
Kick back, grab a cool beverage and read on about how to strengthen your online privacy (compliments of GDPR); a Plutus Award financial publisher honor you may want to aim for; and a handy robo-advisor resource.
A new book focused on how institutional asset managers build sufficient trust to attract and maintain assets is helpful to advisors, albeit on a smaller scale. What I didn’t expect were the key traits that inspired trust.
We make every effort to understand the way that investors go to extremes over what we call the “well-known fact” in the stock market. A “well-known fact” is a body of economic information which is known to virtually everyone in the marketplace and has been acted on by anyone with capital.
Infrastructure is not a glamorous topic — it isn’t satirized on late-night TV, nor is it trending on social media. But the need for increased infrastructure investment is real across the globe. Given expected demographic trends, disruption by new technology and insufficient spending in the past, we at Invesco Real Estate believe infrastructure-related companies could be poised for decades of growth.
Women face at least 12 unique financial and life challenges related to long-term retirement planning. Addressing them can be overwhelming and uncomfortable. Only by understanding the issues can you develop strategies that will provide the greatest chance of achieving your clients’ goals.
The price of bitcoin surged above $8,000 on Tuesday for the first time since May after the Group of 20 (G20) meeting in Argentina concluded last weekend with little urgency to take regulatory action on cryptocurrencies. In a communiqué, finance ministers and central bank governors expressed confidence that the technology underlying alt-coins “can deliver significant benefits to the financial system and the broader economy.”
The Northern Trust Economics team tracks China’s fiscal policies and exchange rate volatility, and reacts to recent comments that undermine the Fed’s independence
For industry veterans, annuities conjure the “bad old days” of pushy insurance companies offering rich commissions to snake-oil salesmen with Rolex-knockoffs peeking out from French cuffs.
Anticipate before you participate in the market. This is a classic piece of advice I like to give investors and have written about extensively in my CEO blog, Frank Talk. Financial markets are influenced by relatively predictable cycles and trading patterns, and by better understanding these we are able to react thoughtfully to headline noise or unexpected market developments.
In the second quarter volatility waned and performance decoupled as divergent backdrops created variances in returns for assets classes and markets across the globe. The winning trades for the second quarter were in the U.S. energy sector, U.S. small companies, and a select group of technology and consumer discretionary stocks.
Modern finance has discovered that stocks that share certain fundamental characteristics called “factors” exhibit different return and risk characteristics than the overall market. These factors or “dimensions of the market” can be classified as: dividend yield, volatility, momentum, quality, size and value.
Will they or won’t they? With the U.S. yield curve flattening to new cycle lows, whether or not the Federal Reserve will stick to its planned rate-hike path is a key question – and could soon become the key question – for financial markets.
As our analysts and researchers travel the world surveying businesses, they hear a lot about disruption—the ability of new often-technology-backed companies to disrupt the status quo.
Headlines about the death of the American shopping mall have become so common that the phrase “retail apocalypse” has its own Wikipedia page. But this is a death wrongly foretold—and that creates investment opportunities.
Today’s popular stocks have literally overwhelmed the stock market in the last four years and six months. To understand today’s financial euphoria, we will analyze three terrific movies made by the actor, Jim Carrey. In Liar Liar, The Truman Show and in Bruce Almighty, we learn morals which we believe should guide us in the long-duration investment process.
The Northern Trust economics team explores agriculture markets globally and in the United States.
Over the next few years, financial markets could be set for a series of “Rude Awakenings,” as we forecasted in our latest Secular Outlook. The global economy is transitioning out of a post-crisis period characterized by remarkable stability, and the changes ahead could be jarring for investors.
I’ve asked countless advisors if they ever had the experience of saying something they thought was really interesting, and having the other person pause, reflect and respond, “Tell me more about that?” This article is about the only two who said “yes.”
The economic calendar is a light one, and many regular participants are on vacation. The most important data include PPI, CPI, and JOLTS, the best read on a tightening labor market.
Emerging market stocks are trading near bear market territory, but that’s par for the course for longer-run, rising returns.
Find a good external manager, take the cut on fees and outsource the management of your investments. Then turn around and be obsessively thorough with your marketing efforts. In the long run your practice will be better for it.
This week I had the privilege of meeting a young tech superstar in Palo Alto, California—Gabe Leydon, cofounder and now-former CEO of mobile game producer MZ. Previously known as Machine Zone, the Sunnyvale-based company is responsible for developing some of the highest-grossing mobile games of all time, including Game of War: Fire Age and Mobile Strike, both of which profited from high-dollar marketing campaigns worthy of some Hollywood films. You might have seen Game of War’s Super Bowl commercial featuring swimsuit model Kate Upton, or Mobile Strike’s, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Summer is just beginning, but emerging-market (EM) bonds and currencies have been on a roller-coaster ride for months now. In markets, though, volatility breeds opportunity—and we still see plenty of that among EM issuers.
We offer up three books to consider reading as summer hits its stride.
Harold Evensky's most recent NewsLetter.
The economic calendar is loaded. The many reports include several of the most-watched. The data may even generate enough fresh news to break the summer slumber. There is plenty of skepticism about the most recent economic data.
Modern Europe’s (and Canada and Australia and…) vaunted social welfare programs have helped many people, but they haven’t eliminated poverty, nor let everyone retire in comfort. Could they simply have shifted spending forward, leaving future generations with the bill? Today, we’ll explore that question as part of my continuing Train Wreck series.
Despite a recent modest pullback in U.S. stocks, and a sharper one in international markets—reflecting both trade worries and the recent strength in the U.S. dollar—we don’t believe it marks the beginning of a more severe correction. Risks of a prolonged trade dispute have risen but it’s too soon to declare war; while the possibility of a positive resolution that would likely be a tailwind for equities. For now, a healthy U.S. economy is an offset to those growing worries. Threats to the current bull market have risen, and they include this being a midterm election year—which have historically been accompanied by larger-than-average maximum drawdowns. We continue to espouse discipline and diversification; but for now it’s in the context of an ongoing bull market.
We’re a little more than a week into the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and so far Russia has surprised experts and fans alike. Expectations were low at best. Because of recent setbacks, including a disastrous performance at the 2016 UEFA European Championship and injuries sustained by key players, the federation ranked a dismal 66th place among Fédération Internationale de Football Association teams—its lowest position ever. The only reason it didn’t have to qualify to compete was because Russia is the host nation. (This is the first time in its 88-year history, by the way, that the World Cup has been held in Eastern Europe.)
Every advisor falls into these five social media profiles. Which one are you?
Especially for those of us who are artistically challenged, stock photos are the bomb. But there’s a trap to beware of, lest those photo bombs backfire on you.
Recent posts from the diversified fixed income team have discussed how bond investors should be prepared to navigate a market that may look very different from what they've grown used to. In other words, it might be time to reassess the old bond-investing playbook.
The U.S. inflation story made further inroads this month, with year-over-year price growth for consumers and producers alike hitting multiyear highs. U.S. consumer prices expanded at their strongest pace in more than six years, climbing to an annual change of 2.8 percent in May. Prices for final demand goods, meanwhile, grew 3.1 percent, their strongest annual surge since December 2011.
