Best Cities to Retire
02 Oct 2015
I recently stumbled upon a fascinating website, the Milken Institute’s Best Cities for Successful Aging. I was doing some research to try and determine whether moving to a state without income tax like Florida or Texas really made a difference to an overall retirement plan. I created a hypothetical client and ran 10,000 scenarios that were identical other than the state where the client retired. As I expected, the difference… Read More
What If I was Japanese?
01 Oct 2015
Stocks enjoyed a positive finish to a tough quarter, as the S&P 500 gained 1.91 percent yesterday but was still down -6.44 percent for the quarter. It was the worst quarter for most markets since 2011 during the first phase of the European debt crisis. Somewhat surprisingly, markets shook off weak purchasing manager data from Chicago and the onset of Russian airstrikes in Syria. Some investors believe that more stimulus… Read More
Don’t Worry, Be Happy and Live Longer
22 Sep 2015
When we look at our financial planning model, a lot of clients say something like, ‘well, I’m never going to make it that long anyway.’ According to Society of Actuaries, more than half of Americans underestimate their life expectancy and that their financial planning time horizons are too short. When asked how long a person their age and gender was expected to live, 40 percent of respondents gave answers that… Read More
The Secret Sauce Behind Value and Momentum
16 Sep 2015
One of the interesting market developments so far this year is the relative performance of momentum versus value in large cap stocks. Earlier this year, I wrote a primer on each strategy (found here and here) and at the end of the momentum article, I pointed out that value and momentum work especially well together. While both strategies have enjoyed higher returns than the overall market, they do so at different times, which… Read More
Oil as an Inflation Hedge
04 Sep 2015
Watching the bottom fall out for oil prices is really one of the most dramatic things that I’ve witnessed in several years. Thankfully, it hasn’t had too much direct impact on us because we don’t have straight exposure to commodities, click here for the details on why we’ve avoided commodities). Of course, we’re all affected by the price drop. The good news is easy to remember because I get a reminder every… Read More
The Chart That Made Me Laugh Out Loud
03 Sep 2015
I think you know by now that I love charts. I am definitely not saying that I am a chartist – I don’t think I have ever made an investment decision for me or anyone else based on a chart. I simply think that if a picture tells a million words then a chart must at least tell 1,000 (roughly matching my wordcount) When I saw a blog titled ‘econompic,’… Read More
Downside Protection That Doesn’t Protect
02 Sep 2015
After reading my article last week (that can be found here) that discussed how we use limit orders to protect us from wild price fluctuations (among other reasons), one of my favorite readers wanted to know why we don’t use stop-loss orders. A stop-loss order is different from a market order, which says ‘do my trade at any price’ and a limit order, which says ‘do my order at a… Read More
Deconstructing the Dow Jones Industrial Average
01 Sep 2015
In last week’s market turbulence when the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell by 1,100 points in a single day, I had to talk about something that I don’t like talking about: the DJIA itself. For the most part, I’m able to avoid talking about the DJIA, which is nice, because I think the index is pretty much an almost worthless relic of history. That said, when markets are volatile and… Read More
High Yielding Asset Classes
19 Aug 2015
Given the low interest rate environment that we’ve endured over the last several years, a lot of our clients ask how we can increase the yield of our portfolios. While yield is an important component of total return (which is income and appreciation/deprecation together), we sometimes see investors stretch for yield without fully understanding the consequences of their decisions. The table below shows the SEC-yield (which is a whole story… Read More
St. Louis Business Journal Recognizes Dannelle Ward
17 Aug 2015
I had the great pleasure of attending the St. Louis Business Journal’s Most Influential Business Women event on Friday to celebrate the success of my business partner, Dannelle Ward. The luncheon at the Chase drew 750 people to honor 25 women that the Business Journal selected from nearly 150 nominations. It was fun to hear all of their stories, which were obviously all impressive. The feature in Friday’s paper provides… Read More