The Devil Wears Nada: What Fashion & Investing Have In Common
The global fashion industry is fickle by nature, pushing and then pulling trends to keep hapless consumers forever turning over their wardrobes. Much of the financial services industry works the same way. Fashion designers, manufacturers, and media operate by telling … Continue reading
Retirement Distribution Planning & Maximizing After-tax Wealth
Location, location, location. It matters when it comes to real estate. It also matters when it comes to the way you hold and invest your retirement savings. You cannot control what happens with the tax code, but you can control … Continue reading
Willy Wonka Meets Wall Street
In a popular children’s story, the young hero pins all his hopes on finding one of a handful of “golden tickets” hidden among millions of candy bars. It seems many people approach investing the same way. The notion that the … Continue reading
Behavioral Finance, Poor Investment Results and a Developing Nanny State
One of the most interesting areas of financial research these past ten years has come, oddly, not from economists or investment researchers, but psychologists, who are pioneering a branch of study known as “behavioral finance.” This has led to one … Continue reading
What Can We Learn from 2013’s Investment Predictions
It was the best year for the S&P 500 Index since 1997, with a total return in excess of 32%. The unusually strong performance of US stocks in 2013 was a welcome surprise but also a source of exasperation for … Continue reading
Investment Returns: What Should We Expect Going Forward?
As I write this article in mid December, the S&P 500 is wrapping up an incredibly fruitful 2013. The market index has now been up five years in a row and ten out of the last eleven years, granted with … Continue reading
Roth IRA Conversions Can Lower Your Tax Rate
Roth IRA conversions – converting money from pre-tax IRAs or 401(k)s to tax-free Roth IRAs – have been a hot topic especially among high-income taxpayers since the income limitations on conversions were lifted in 2010. Converting can now be done … Continue reading
Emerging Markets and Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler”
Many investors fell for emerging markets in recent years when they delivered sizeable returns. More recently, the associated risk has reasserted itself and the infatuation has faded. To paraphrase Kenny Rogers, “You got to know when to hold ’em, fold … Continue reading
Change to Money Market Fund in Client Accounts
We will be changing the money market fund used in client accounts to a new tiered-rate structure fund, based on the brokerage account value–not just the money fund value. The larger your account, the larger the credited yield. For example, … Continue reading
Economics Nobel Goes To Efficient Market Champion
“Stock prices reflect all available information.” This simple, yet profound concept spawned in the 1960s continued to evolve into more sophisticated asset pricing theories and has won Eugene F. Fama, “Father of Modern Finance,” the 2013 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in … Continue reading
