Insights

Can an individual broker/advisor and their team consistently deliver outperformance? Perhaps we can look to the mutual fund industry for the answer. Afterall, individual brokers/advisors and their teams are essentially a smaller version of larger active mutual fund managers. Both are looking to deliver outperformance through specific stock picking and market timing. Each year, Dimensional Fund Advisors analyzes returns from a large sample of US-based mutual funds. The objective is to assess the performance of mutual fund managers relative to
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Every year, families and friends celebrate students who are graduating from colleges and universities. Parents beam with pride at their children’s accomplishments and exhale in relief now that the tuition bills have finally stopped. It’s a time when adults give a lot of advice, which is why I have one simple idea I want to pass along to this year’s graduating class that I hope you never forget. Parents, take note too, because with college out of the way, you
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“Every ten years or so the world falls apart… How can I remain standing, when the world breaks”. Morgan Housel(1)   I’m not suggesting the world is currently breaking, but there will always be financial uncertainty in the world – pandemics, wars, financial crisis, real estate crisis – just to name the most recent. So how do you weather these storms and stay invested and committed to achieving your long term goals while protecting your short term needs as you
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Certain planning situations like when a client is scheduled to receive substantial sums of wealth ($5M-$15M+) call for advanced planning techniques. Our client may feel a need to transition from wealth creation to wealth preservation. These scenarios include a large inheritance, liquidation scenarios such as a company sale, either a personal company or a corporate sale when the client holds a sizeable amount of company stock, and/or simply the payment of a large bonus. Advanced planning techniques include the consideration
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Bucket portfolios aren’t rational, but they are perfectly normal and can be an effective tool for investors. Bucket portfolios are aimed at providing spending resources during investors’ decumulation periods, usually in retirement. They are typically composed of three buckets, arranged by time horizon and investment type. The first bucket contains cash, such as a money market fund, sufficient for spending as planned in the short horizon and set at one, two or perhaps five years. The second consists mostly of
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Think back to December 2019. The economy was humming. Unemployment, interest rates, and inflation were at historically low levels. But then what happened? A global pandemic hit. By the end of March, the S&P 500 had dropped nearly 20% in value.1 Later in the year, scientists announced that they’d developed a vaccine, and markets roared back. FAANG stocks soared … before giving up a lot of gains.2 Meme stocks shot way up … and fell back down. Bitcoin and other
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With all the talk about inflation these days, you may have heard the news that the 2023 cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security benefits is 8.7%, the largest in four decades. If you are approaching or over age 62 and haven’t filed for your retirement benefits, you may be wondering if you should file earlier than planned so you do not miss out on the increase. The reality is that you do not need to file now to benefit from
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Along with warmer weather and lazy days spent at a pool, summertime also often includes a family gathering, such as a Fourth of July barbecue, a family vacation, a reunion, or time spent at a family cabin or lake house. Whatever the form, in our always-on-the-go society, getting the whole family together is a rare occurrence. Consider taking advantage of this time together to discuss your estate and financial wishes with your family by including a family meeting in your
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We are all familiar with the benefits estate planning can provide. By clearly defining how we want our loved ones taken care of after we pass, wills and trusts help ensure a safe and secure transfer of assets and avoid probate issues. Yet, an often-overlooked part of estate planning is defining how our heirs should manage our digital assets after we pass or become incapacitated. Families must consider what happens to their loved one’s email accounts, airline and hotel points,
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Can an individual broker/advisor and their team consistently deliver outperformance? Perhaps we can look to the mutual fund industry for the answer. Afterall, individual brokers/advisors and their teams are essentially a smaller version of larger active mutual fund managers. Both are looking to deliver outperformance through specific stock picking and market timing. Each year, Dimensional analyzes returns from a large sample of US-based mutual funds. The objective is to assess the performance of mutual fund managers relative to benchmarks.* This
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