Posts Tagged ‘advisor’
Don’t Ask Your Portfolio To Do More Than It Is Designed To Do.
Some people want more from their investment portfolios than gains and income. Like other major arenas in life—some load more baggage onto a portfolio than it is designed to carry. Making more money guarantees nothing except it will make a person wealthier. An unhappy person will be an unhappy investor. Assuming grinding poverty is not…
Read MorePsychological Factors Magnify and Prolong the Negative Impact of Market Losses
Wealthy people can take losses in their retirement portfolios lot easier than middle-income households who have plans for every dime that they have invested. But investors with large portfolios—portfolios that could be reduced by half and still not put their retirement in jeopardy—often fail also to employ coping strategies that help in rough times. In…
Read MoreHow Much Should the Middle-Income Household Risk in the Market?
Middle-income families often do not have the resources to employ financial advisors. Yahoo Finance states that middle-income households have an average of approximately $110,000 set aside for their retired years. Financial advisors and brokers at major firms like Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and UBS Paine Webber are looking for mega buck accounts—accounts with $250,000 or…
Read MoreRetirement Planning for the Middle-income Household, One Step at a Time – Part II
In Deadly Portfolio: A Killing in Hedge Funds, Matthew Wirth and Morrie Clay work with wealthy people with large sums set aside for retirement planning. As pointed out in the first article in this series, that is not the case for the middle-class American household. In the first post, we accomplished two important initial steps.…
Read MoreSo We Have a Deal. Now What?
The news for the last several days, of course, has been all about the debt ceiling and the debate in Congress about raising it and cutting expenditures. So much has been written and broadcast about the subject that I don’t feel it serves much purpose for me to rehash things here. Thanks to all of…
Read MoreFinancial Advisor or Stockbroker. A Brief History.
In a recent interview, I was asked whether the 30 basis points charged against Mac McAllister’s $18,900,000 account in Deadly Portfolio: A Killing in Hedge Funds was realistic. 30 basis points is three-tenths of a percent, or $56,700 each year for managing the account. An $18,900,000 account is not 18.9 times more work to manage…
Read MoreMiddle-class Income and Want to Beat Average Market Returns? Forget it!
Most middle-class families didn’t have much wealth to begin with — about $100,000. For the 22 million families right in the middle of the income distribution (those making between $39,000 and $62,000 before taxes), about 90% of their assets was in the house. Now half of their wealth is gone and it will never come…
Read MoreBanks – appearances count. Honesty not so much.
Someone wrote that the public tended to trust bankers even when they didn’t think that bankers were very bright. I don’t agree. Mediocrity is the goal at banks. Appearances, however, are of overriding important. I was with a large bank in the Southeast for nearly ten years. A couple of stories make my point. The…
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