Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" - this week's edition kicks off with a scathing investigative report from Ann Marsh at Financial Planning magazine, highlighting how brokers guilty of consumer harm are obtaining settlements in FINRA arbitration and then getting their records expunged on the basis of not being found guilty (due to pre-empting a guilty finding with the settlement!). Also in the news this week was an SEC report reviewing the ETF "flash crash" from August 24th, which disturbingly finds the problem was so widespread that it's still not clear why it happened, nor is it clear what needs be done to prevent it from occurring again in the future.
From there, we have a few practice management articles this week, including: a Bob Veres discussion of whether the typical advisory firm's efforts to impress prospective clients are actually just intimidating them; the first of what will likely be many stories looking at how the Department of Labor fiduciary rule may change the industry; a controversial suggestion from practice management guru Mark Tibergien that perhaps the industry's "talent shortage" problem is actually a shortage of skilled advisory firm management capable of attracting, developing, and retaining Millennial talent; and a profile of Live Oak Bank, which has burst onto the scene in recent years to become one of the primary lenders financing advisory firm succession plans, with more than $250M of loans funded since 2013.
We also have a couple of technical articles this week, from a look at how the recent spending legislation's extension of the solar investment tax credit may spur an explosive boom in solar energy, a discussion of how traditional portfolio metrics fail to capture the benefits of downside portfolio protection (and an alternative way to better measure the impact), and an analysis of why most people should actually consider funding an HSA first for retirement (in some cases even before a 401(k) plan with a match) given that virtually all retirees will have at least some medical expenses in retirement which can be funded tax-free from the HSA.
We wrap up with three interesting articles: the first is an interview with John Thiel, the head of wealth management at Merrill Lynch, who discusses how the firm is preparing itself for the looming Department of Labor fiduciary rule (and that it would rather comply with a fiduciary obligation to clients than walk away from $2 trillion of AUM); the second is a nice turn-of-the-new-year reminder that it's a good time to de-clutter (whether it's your desk, your business, or your clients); and the last is a Wall Street Journal highlighting recent research into consumer spending behaviors, and why the traditional advice to just budget and monitor spending is so often ineffective in practice.
Enjoy the reading, and Happy New Year!