Financial Planning

Many advisors aren’t familiar with financial phobias. They are common and can be debilitating.

Why has there been a reluctance within the advisory profession to actively collect, much less leverage client experience feedback?

Understanding and managing your firm’s practice growth multiplier is your ticket to enduring success, higher profits, and a more rewarding practice.

The benefits of RILAs vary significantly by design, and buffer RILAs have historically been a more attractive addition to a portfolio than floor RILAs.

It’s an important time for Medicare beneficiaries to optimize their healthcare coverage and costs, and financial advisors are in the perfect position to guide clients through this crucial planning opportunity.

I lost my dad, Alfred Munro Flaxington, this past weekend.

In this article, I shed light on 10 common pitfalls and provide strategies to avoid them, ultimately helping you add more value to your client relationships.

The next time someone suggests that nonnormal returns are a problem with Monte Carlo, tell them that their concern is a nonissue.

Here are the six things you can do to create stellar content and increase your odds of going viral.

Why is it so hard to gain the confidence with my existing clients that I have with prospects and raise their fees?

Dropping a 100-page financial plan in favor of a simplified one-page plan delivers massive value to clients and wins over prospects.

AI is a tool to elevate and redefine job duties. Here are strategies for how AI can augment the work of fiduciary advisors while helping them stay relevant and competitive.

Recently, I came across an example of something worse than having no will…

So-called “finfluencers” are preying on naïve investors, promising unrealistic returns while generating excessive commissions for themselves. Their bait is an indexed-universal life (IUL) policy. Read this to avoid making a costly mistake.

Applying planning expertise is a very complicated art form, a skill that is acquired over time, but which can be accelerated if there were a way to capture many of things that soon-to-be-retired advisors have learned through years of practice.

Despite the increasing popularity of self-directed brokerage accounts (SDBAs) within 401(k) plans, recent data reveals that women are under-utilizing this investment tool.

Let’s look at the keys to creating a successful podcast.

There are tools to help you level up in client behavior, experience, and engagement.

How do you cultivate a successful referral program?

I’ll outline content ideas to help your top sellers, C-suite leaders, or founders emerge as thought leaders.

Investors have access to multiple personalized indexing products, a key benefit of which is to allow for tax-loss harvesting (TLH). I analyze when TLH works and how helpful it is to returns.

When adjusting for more realistic assumptions and considering the fact that the insurance company can change return caps and that inflation is both an unknown and deep risk, an FIA, along with most annuities, is not on the efficient frontier in either accumulation or decumulation phases.

IUL is a popular investment, thanks to aggressive marketing. Before your clients succumb to high-pressure sales tactics, here’s a cautionary tale based on another lifetime purchase decision – buying an engagement ring.

Twenty years ago, the answer to this question was obvious. Wirehouses had better technology compared to any other firm or affiliation model.

Why don’t more advisors recommend simple portfolios?

I’m having a hard time helping the senior advisor see that I have insights and ideas.

Advisors are increasingly turning to OCIOs to differentiate their firms, increase profitability and scale their businesses through gained efficiencies.

What is the secret to digital marketing that drives website traffic and leads?

Admittedly, I’ve glossed over the other catalysts in Ackman’s thesis — including the aforementioned supply-demand issues and the fiscal and governance challenges that Fitch underscored in its recent downgrade — but the inflation call seems to be the linchpin to his argument, at least going by the math in the post.

The only constant in life is change — and Wall Street strategists trying in vain to divine the stock market’s future. After collectively missing the lion’s share of the year-to-date rally in the S&P 500 Index, the Street’s macro soothsayers appear to be getting modestly more bullish again.

Of all the signs out there that the US will manage to dodge a recession once deemed inevitable, perhaps none is more convincing than this: CEOs across the country are opting to reinvest more of their profits in expansion projects rather than handing the money back to shareholders.

You need to pay attention to the role of emotions to effectively communicate with your clients.

After a strong resurgence from last year’s bear market, the S&P 500 Index looks stretched. By at least one valuation measure, the leading gauge of the US stock market has rarely been more expensive during the past three decades.

Bitcoin trading volume tumbled last month amid waning volatility and little notable price swings in a market that speculators traditionally gravitate to for its turbulence.

Cynics often say about hedge funds are a compensation scheme masquerading as an asset class. If the critics are looking for ammunition to make their case, they need to look no further than Sculptor Capital Management Inc., the firm formerly known as Och-Ziff Capital Management.

The US Treasury boosted its estimate for federal borrowing for the current quarter as it addresses a deteriorating fiscal deficit and keeps replenishing its cash buffer.

While the equity allocation of portfolios should increase for longer investment horizons, the adjustment should be less than implied by the historical evidence, and it should be based on each investor’s unique situation and preferences.

Investors on Wall Street and beyond are betting that the great tech rally of 2023 has staying power, even as they appear skeptical that the artificial intelligence era will live up to the hype.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday appeared to give traders the positive signal they’ve been waiting for — that the central bank may finally be wrapping up its steepest interest-rate hikes since the early 1980s.

While on the surface its argument is about the principle of copyright, what the clash reveals is just how little we know about the data behind breakthrough tech like ChatGPT.

A stellar year for JPMorgan Asset Management is proving to be an unusually tepid one for the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock Inc., shaking up the leaderboard in the $7.6 trillion US exchange-traded fund industry.

Howard Marks’ classic investing book The Most Important Thing has more nuggets of wisdom than I can count, but my personal favorites are his reflections on the futility of forecasting.

There’s another side to power, reflecting a more nuanced view. It can improve communication, convert more prospects and deepen relationships with existing clients.

Markets should brace for a deep US recession that warrants a dramatic one percentage-point interest-rate cut by the Federal Reserve, warned DoubleLine Capital’s Jeffrey Sherman.

TCW Group, the asset manager with a long history of managing bond funds, is expanding into exchange-traded funds with an agreement to buy an ETF business from activist investor Engine No. 1.

The Fed needs to resolve this disagreement — by making clear that it’s committed to getting inflation all the way back down to the 2% target.

Last year’s plunge in the S&P 500 made uber bear Mike Wilson the most celebrated stock forecaster on Wall Street. It’s a role he has failed to reprise in 2023.