Articles on Wealth Management Topics

It's no secret that the popularity of exchange-traded funds, or ETF's, has sky-rocketed since the very first one, the S&P 500 SPDR, was introduced more than 25 years ago. Investment flows continue to pour into these vehicles, and ETF sponsors continue to oblige investors by rolling out a never-ending stream of new products. The dark side of this onslaught of ETF introductions is that record numbers of mutual funds are also closing, and fund closures can have serious repercussions for the investors owning them.

Financial advisors vary widely in the business models in which they operate and in the standards of care that they owe to clients. These factors determine the quality of advice provided, and of products recommended, by any given financial advisor as much as his/her education, experience, and professional designations.

Now there are almost 1800 ETF's being traded in the U.S., a remarkable number considering that there are less than 4000 companies listed on exchanges here. To distinguish themselves from the competition and to attract investment assets, these fund sponsors have stopped at nothing to slice and dice the financial markets in innovative, and in many cases just plain silly, ways.

The Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) designation is the most widely recognized certification for financial advisors. However, CFP® certificants vary enormously in the regulatory environments and business models in which they operate. These differences have tremendous implications for the quality of financial advice that a consumer should expect to receive from a given CFP® practitioner.

Returns in financial markets are often cyclical. That is, multi-year periods during which asset classes or investing styles or mutual fund sectors succeed in generating above-average returns are usually followed by multi-year periods of disappointing returns, and vice versa. Since this market behavior is a key tenet on which our contrarian investment philosophy rests, let's explore the academic research supporting it and the ramifications for successful long-term investing.

One of the major factors to consider when deciding whether to rollover a retirement plan account to an IRA is investment flexibility. An IRA typically allows its owner almost unlimited investment flexibility. In contrast, a 401k, 403b or 457 retirement plan account-holder is constrained to choose from among the menu of investment options made available by the plan's sponsor and service provider.

If you rely on the media, and particularly the local media, for your coverage of the stock market, you will find that the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is the most oft-quoted measure of how the stock market performed on a given day. And yet most stock market professionals - portfolio managers, analysts, strategists and the like - will refer to the S&P 500 Index instead of the DJIA as their preferred yardstick of market performance. Why is this?

If there is a Rodney Dangerfield of investments, it has to be Treasury Bonds. They always yield less than other taxable fixed-income investments with the same maturity, they don't get the airtime afforded stocks, and they don't have the mysterious allure of alternative investments. But in times of crisis, when other investments are withering under the pressure, Treasury Bonds usually step into the breach to provide a diversified portfolio with capital gains when they're needed most.

With financial markets quietly grinding higher in recent months, I've been able to complete one of my major projects for the year, which was to investigate so-called "smart beta" mutual funds.