In theory, the efficient market is supposed to reward the business that create products and services that improve the lives of their customers, while businesses that create harmful or ineffective solutions generate no income and cease to exist. Industries where the marketplace is too inefficient, and/or where bad products and services can result in public harm, receive some type of regulation to ensure the public good. Given the remarkably inefficient nature of marketplace for advisor education, perhaps it's time for some sort of oversight there, too? :/
Style Box Drift – Maybe Not Such a Bad Thing After All?
In the traditional investment world, it is considered crucial for an active investment manager to stick to their style box. After all, if the manager "drifts" from small cap to large cap, the investor may suddenly find themselves with an under-allocation to small cap, and an excess of large cap, violating their goal of maintaining a well diversified portfolio. Yet there is a growing recognition that for many mutual funds, constraint to a style box may be eliminating the very value that active management was intended to achieve!
Is "Save For Decades, Then Quickly Double Your Money And Retire" Your (Unintentional) Retirement Advice!?
If there's one thing that has remained certain in this decade of difficulty, it's the gold standard advice for retirement planning: save a healthy amount of your income, start young, invest steadily, and you'll be able to retire when you want to and enjoy the standard of living you hoped and dreamed for.
Yet the reality is that this model of retirement planning advice excellence is actually far more speculative than we have ever acknowledged, and might be better summed up as: "Save for decades, build a base, and then in the last few years, quickly double up your wealth with investment growth and retire happily." We'd never say that to our clients... yet in truth, that's exactly what we have been recommending all along!
Difficult Investment Clients? It’s Not Their Risk Tolerance, It’s Their Risk (Mis-) Perceptions
Most planners have struggled at times to deal with "difficult" clients. Sometimes it's the client who says he's really tolerant of risk and wants 30% returns... until the decline comes. Other times it's the client who refuses to tolerate any risk whatsoever... yet laments the low returns that entails. Accordingly, most planners try to avoid working with clients at the extremes of risk tolerance (or lack thereof). But the truth is, these challenging clients usually do not really have extreme levels of risk (in-)tolerance... instead, the problem is actually with their risk perceptions, and it requires a different solution.
Is The Internet Changing The Value Of Financial Planning?
The members of Generation X and Gen Y have had a unique collective experience, including growing up in the age of computers and (especially for Gen Y) with immersive exposure to the internet and the information resources it provides. Questions that might have required a trip to the library or an Encyclopedia Brittanica can be answered in a 10-second Google search. So if clients can look up a financial question in a few moments on the internet, where does that leave the value of financial planning?
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Percentages Going Up, Dollars Going Down
Most planners doing financial planning reviews with clients have witnessed the phenomenon: when markets go up, clients look at their growth rates; when markets go down, clients look at the dollars they have lost. What can behavioral finance tell us about why we have such an asymmetric view of the market's ups and downs?
The Better The Returns The More We Save… Wait, What?
Recent research on the reaction of investors to the 2008-2009 market downturn has confirmed an interesting tendency of investors that I have long believed - the better our returns, the more we're willing to save. Yet the irony is that theoretically, the better our returns, the LESS we need to save, because we'll have more growth from our investments. Nonetheless, if we don't account for this very human behavior about saving, we can end out with some disastrous financial planning advice.
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AMT Repeal Could Be Coming – But At What "Cost"?
Earlier this week, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform released a draft version of its proposals on how to take control of our nation's deficit challenges, including suggestions for comprehensive tax reform. The good news in the proposal is that it includes a repeal of the highly unpopular Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). The "bad" news is that the proposal also includes a repeal of many popular tax credits and deductions as well. But the reality is that we can't really have one, without the other.
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Big Shifts Continue in the Long-Term Care Insurance Marketplace
Citing an array of classic problems - including interest rates, morbidity, mortality, and persistency - long-term care and general insurance behemoth MetLife announced this week that it will be leaving the long-term care marketplace completely. And coming on the heels of recent announcements last month by GenWorth and John Hancock of significant premium increases on large blocks of their policies, it would seem that the long-term care insurance marketplace is in a bit of turmoil. Does this mean the industry is in trouble, or is this actually a sign of stabilization?
