With the start of the new year, now is the time to start thinking about how you’ll make 2017 fulfilling and fruitful for you and your loved ones. For more than 4,000 years, many people have celebrated the start of their new year by making promises to change their behavior or improve themselves. And it’s no wonder why: While New Year’s resolutions can be hard to keep, they may also make you more than 10 [...]
After 18 years and a very successful career in the National Football League, the Denver Broncos’ star quarterback, Peyton Manning, retired in 2016 at the age of 39. We wish him well and hope he made the preparations needed to enjoy a long, comfortable retirement. If he did, he’ll be in the minority. Research shows that an estimated 60% of retired NFL players go broke within five years of retirement; nearly 16% declare bankruptcy (http://fortune.com/2015/04/15/nfl-players-bankrupt/ [...]
I took my two-year old daughter, Lexi, to Trader Joe's yesterday to buy two turkeys. Over the past couple years I’ve picked up the hobby of smoking meat, so I’m going to try smoking a turkey for the first time, and just in case something goes wrong, I'm going to fry the other one. If you've never gone to buy a turkey at Trader Joe's – do it, and take a child with you. Lexi [...]
When talking to potential clients about my investment strategy, it’s common to hear a lot of the same arguments for the ‘buy and hold’ strategy that their current investment advisor is utilizing. Below are the top 3 “investment myths” I hear the big investment advisory firms telling their clients: 1. Your portfolio will be just fine as long as you sit tight and ride it out. Historically, the markets have had more positive years than [...]
The markets have certainly been frightening over the past couple weeks. As such, I have been receiving many “thank you” emails and phone calls from clients for selling before the market sell-off last Thursday. Several of you have spoken of friends and relatives who are anxious about their current advisors strategy (and likely for good reason), but many people are skeptical of how I was able to “get out” and avoid the steep losses everyone [...]
While many American families celebrated the official beginning of summer, those of us charged with maintaining their portfolios were hanging on the news each day as it was released. It was a rocky go, and while the month may have ended (finally), we still have much to watch as the events of June 2011 play out in the months ahead. So… you may be thinking, ‘What in the world did I miss?’ In the spirit [...]
Do you know how much buying and selling your investments at the wrong time can cost you? According to Morningstar, stock funds returned 1.6% annually from 1999-2009. However, the typical fund investor only earned 0.22% annually. If you had an account balance of $100,000, that would equate to costing you $15,000. So what should investors do to protect their portfolios? Below are a few tips of mine for investors looking for guidance:cheap rate personal loan [...]
I like to keep in-mind the beginning of Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem ‘If’ as I lead investors through weeks like last week: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too...” While certainly no one was blaming last week’s slamming of the global markets on me, emotions ran high [...]
Total Returns % 1 Week YTD Dow Jones Industrial Average -1.03% +4.03% NASDAQ Composite -2.48% +2.36% S&P 500 Index -1.28% +3.71% Russell 2000 -2.69% +2.45% U.S. Aggregate Bond Index +0.58% -0.11% MSCI All Country World -2.18% +1.79% Source: Yahoo! Finance. Data through 3-11-11 This past week was bad across the board for global markets. In particular, Japan’s market really took a hit with the earthquake. My thoughts and prayers to Japan, and hopefully containment of [...]
There are many approaches to gaining exposure to an investment area of interest. A common, often over-looked or under-utilized approach is through the backdoor. As an example, people that want to ride the Apple computer company tidal wave could invest in the companies that supply the “guts” of Apple’s products. Or, investors that want exposure to steel could invest in coal, or coke companies (or even railroads). Sometimes backdoor investing is all an investor will [...]