Wealth Management
JANUARY 25, 2024
Chuck Cooper III, advisor and managing partner at Lee’s Summit, Mo.-based StrongBox Wealth, provides a peek inside the $400 million RIA’s stock picking strategy within its high conviction, conservative growth model portfolio.
Nerd's Eye View
JANUARY 22, 2024
In the early days of wealth management, a financial advisor's value proposition was relatively explicit, typically focusing on a limited range of portfolio management activities (e.g., selling and trading) or on sales-oriented advice that centered on implementing insurance products. As the industry has evolved, though, the value offered by financial advisors, especially for High-Net-Worth (HNW) clients, has come to involve a far more comprehensive range of services in addition to traditional inv
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Abnormal Returns
JANUARY 21, 2024
Top clicks this week On the importance of time when it comes to compounding. (humbledollar.com) How to use AI to do fundamental company analysis. (howardlindzon.com) How to use a negative checklist. (novelinvestor.com) Where are real interest rates going to settle? (mrzepczynski.blogspot.com) You can only control your own behavior. (creativeplanning.com) There's no magic in personal finance, but there are some surprising hacks.
The Big Picture
JANUARY 24, 2024
At the Money: How to Pay Less Capital Gains Taxes (January 24, 2024) We’re coming up on tax season, after a banner year for stocks. Successful investors could be looking at a big tax bill from the US government. How can you avoid sticker shock when Uncle Sam comes knocking? On this episode of At the Money, we look at direct indexing as a way to manage capital gains taxes.
Speaker: Amanda Adams, Fractional CFO, CPA
Are you ready to elevate your accounting processes for 2025? 🚀 Join us for an exclusive webinar led by Amanda Adams, a seasoned fractional CFO and CPA passionate about transforming back-office operations for finance teams. This session will cover critical best practices and process improvements tailored specifically for accounting professionals.
A Wealth of Common Sense
JANUARY 26, 2024
As millennials reach middle age (hand up), prepare yourself for a wave of 1990s nostalgia. Remember MTV? Remember life before smartphones and social media? Remember rap groups? Remember life before everyone was forced to care about politics? Remember Saved by the Bell? Remember going to Blockbuster on a Friday night to pick out a movie? Finance people also have an affinity for the 1990s economy.
Financial Advisor Source brings together the best content for financial advisor professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Abnormal Returns
JANUARY 23, 2024
Research How to model private credit returns, per AQR. (institutionalinvestor.com) Another example showing the impact of screening out negative momentum stocks with lottery-like characteristics. (alphaarchitect.com) How to build a better low vol strategy. (blogs.cfainstitute.org) How smartphones have affected the transmission of investor sentiment. (papers.ssrn.com) Bloomberg has built an AI tool to summarize earnings calls.
The Big Picture
JANUARY 26, 2024
This week, we speak with Sarah Kirshbaum Levy , chief executive officer of Betterment , an independent digital investment adviser with $40 billion in assets under management. Before joining Betterment, Kirshbaum Levy was chief operating officer of Viacom Media Networks, where she oversaw global strategy, finance and operations. Previously, Levy served as COO at Nickelodeon, where she spearheaded Nickelodeon’s entry into new segments, including consumer products, resorts, Broadway and them
Advisor Perspectives
JANUARY 22, 2024
The Conference Board Leading Economic Index (LEI) fell for a 21st straight month in December as the LEI continues to signal underlying weakness in the U.S. economy. The index inched down 0.1% from last month to 103.1, the index's lowest reading since May 2020.
Nerd's Eye View
JANUARY 24, 2024
As more Americans are living well into their 80s and even into their 90s, the spectrum of risks that an aging population faces is only getting wider. The need to address longevity risk has become increasingly important, allowing financial advisors to add even more value for their clients by ensuring that their financial needs are met throughout retirement.
Speaker: Abdi Ali, Sr. Lease Accounting Consultant
Join this insightful webinar with industry expert Abdi Ali, who will discuss the challenges that can arise from managing lease accounting with spreadsheets! He will share real-world examples of errors, compliance issues, and risks that may be present within your spreadsheets. Learn how these tools, while useful, can sometimes lead to inefficiencies that affect your time, resources, and peace of mind.
Abnormal Returns
JANUARY 22, 2024
Markets Putting the past bear market into historical perspective. (awealthofcommonsense.com) Bitcoin How supply and demand drives Bitcoin. (theirrelevantinvestor.com) FTX sold a bunch of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ($GBTC). (coindesk.com) Is Bitcoin mining a good business? (herbgreenberg.substack.com) Finance In credit cards there's Visa ($V), Mastercard ($MA), and everyone else.
The Big Picture
JANUARY 20, 2024
The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of coffee, grab a seat by the fire, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads: • The Downfall of Diddy Inc. : After months in court, Sean Combs withdrew his racially charged lawsuit against Diageo. A look inside that battle reveals the failed attempt of a fading hip-hop mogul—who’s been buffeted by charges of sexual assault—to salvage a crumbling business empire. ( Businessweek ) • America’s New Business Boom : Americans Have Been Forming New
Calculated Risk
JANUARY 26, 2024
From the U.S. Courts: Bankruptcy Filings Rise 16.8 Percent Total bankruptcy filings rose 16.8 percent, with significant increases in both business and non-business bankruptcies, in the twelve-month period ending Dec. 31, 2023. This accelerates a continuing rebound in filings after more than a decade of sharply dropping totals. According to statistics released by the Administrative Office of the U.S.
Nerd's Eye View
JANUARY 26, 2024
Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news of a survey indicating that about 90% of financial advisors would switch firms based on bad technology at their current firm, and that 44% have already done so. The survey also suggests that a firm's tech stack can affect its ability to attract and retain clients, with 93% of advisors who said they work with state-of-the-art technology reporting that they have added new c
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Join us in this webinar, where we share best practices on how to think about the reconciliation work each month, when best to do reconciliations, how they should be prepared, and some common pitfalls to avoid. Learning Objectives: This course objective is to understand how to properly prepare and review balance sheet reconciliations and its impact on the financial statements.
Abnormal Returns
JANUARY 20, 2024
EVs Why isn't every car a hybrid at this point? (nytimes.com) Behind the slowdown in EV sales. (snippet.finance) EV owners need to consider depreciation. (bloomberg.com) Why we need to get EVs in the hands of 'superdrivers.' (nytimes.com) Solar energy California is making it harder for residents to put up solar panels. (nytimes.com) The Bureau of Land Management wants to boost utility-scale solar on public lands.
The Big Picture
JANUARY 22, 2024
Remember Squid Game ? Written and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, “Squid Game” made its debut on Netflix on September 17, 2001. During the lockdown, it quickly became must-see TV, becoming a global phenomenon. Variety reported that Squid Games had “1.65 billion hours streamed in first four weeks.” Eventually, the show became Netflix’s most-watched original show by far, racking up over 2.2 billion hours of viewing.
Alpha Architect
JANUARY 26, 2024
For investors that use trend-following strategies, Avramov, Kaplanski, and Subrhmanyam provided new evidence supporting momentum strategies and showed that the distance between short- and longer-term momentum signals provides additional explanatory power in the cross-section of equity returns. Moving Average Distance and Time-Series Momentum was originally published at Alpha Architect.
Nerd's Eye View
JANUARY 25, 2024
Few service industries have as much potential to impact lives as financial advice, and it's that very ability for financial advicers to help their clients achieve positive outcomes that can often compound for decades and beyond that make the profession deeply satisfying for so many. It's no wonder, then, that the profession attracts individuals who are highly service-minded and enjoy helping others.
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As we step into 2024, the lending landscape evolves rapidly with technology, regulations, and market dynamics driving change. For banks and financial institutions to stay competitive and meet the evolving needs of their customers, these drivers must be understood and engaged with. Lenders can anticipate significant transformation fueled by technological advancements, regulatory shifts, and changing consumer behaviors.
Abnormal Returns
JANUARY 21, 2024
Equities The S&P 500 is at a new all-time high. (tker.co) Lessons learned from the two-year bear market. (theirrelevantinvestor.com) Diversification Why investors should just take a pass on China. (humbledollar.com) It's easy to forget, but diversification still matters. (disciplinefunds.com) Crypto A little Bitcoin in your portfolio goes a long way.
Calculated Risk
JANUARY 22, 2024
Altos reports that active single-family inventory was up 0.2% week-over-week. It is not unusually to get a small increase after the holidays; however, inventory will likely decrease a little seasonally until the Spring (it could remain mostly flat for a few months like in 2019). Click on graph for larger image. This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.
Discipline Funds
JANUARY 22, 2024
There was a viral video over the weekend from a young lady complaining about having to go to work. The basic gist of the video was that work is a waste of time and stops people from doing things they’d actually want to do. This might be a long-ish post, but it’s deeply intertwined in economics, life and discipline so grab a coffee or click that exit button depending on whether you’re in the mood to listen to an old man rant. 1 When I visited Japan for the first time 10 years ag
Nerd's Eye View
JANUARY 23, 2024
Welcome back to the 369th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast ! My guest on today's podcast is Michelle Ogden. Michelle is the founder of Ogden Wealth, an RIA based in Maitland, Florida, that oversees $50M in assets under management for almost 120 client households. What's unique about Michelle, though, is that after seeing the challenges that come with too-fast growth in her husband's business, she decided to be very slow and methodical in her own growth and limit her need to rely
Speaker: Igli Laci, Strategic Finance Leader
In today’s competitive market, pricing is more than just a number — it’s the cornerstone of profitability. The right pricing strategy ensures that you capture the true value of your offering, paving the way for sustainable growth and long-term success. Join Igli Laci, Strategic Finance Leader, in this exclusive session where he will explore how a well-crafted pricing approach balances customer perception with business objectives, creating a powerful tool for securing both competitive advantage a
Abnormal Returns
JANUARY 26, 2024
Markets Bob Seawright, "If you keep making the same wrong call over and over, you don’t get any credit for it when it eventually turns up." (betterletter.substack.com) Dividends are less volatile than stocks themselves. (awealthofcommonsense.com) How to think about the growth in money market fund assets. (spilledcoffee.substack.com) Crypto How the structure of the Bitcoin market has changed with the introduction of the spot ETFs.
A Wealth of Common Sense
JANUARY 21, 2024
It’s been a while but we’re back: After a little more than two years, the S&P 500 finally took out the highs from January 2022 on Friday. New all-time highs! This bear market felt nasty in 2022 but it was fairly run-of-the-mill when compared with the biggest downturns over the past 70+ years. Here’s an updated table of S&P 500 bear markets since 1950 along with the number of days it has taken to.
Calculated Risk
JANUARY 26, 2024
Here is a graph of the year-over-year change in shelter from the CPI report and housing from the PCE report this morning, both through December 2023. CPI Shelter was up 6.2% year-over-year in December, down from 6.5% in November, and down from the cycle peak of 8.2% in March 2023. Housing (PCE) was up 6.4% YoY in December , down from 6.7% in November, and down from the cycle peak of 8.3% in April 2023.
Wealthfront
JANUARY 25, 2024
In planning your investment strategy for 2024 and beyond, there are wise principles to keep in mind: While no one can predict how market prices will move in any particular period, there are time-tested general rules that can put the odds of success squarely in your favor. In this letter we will offer some simple […] The post Burt Malkiel & Alex Michalka’s Insights for Investors in 2024 appeared first on Wealthfront Blog.
Speaker: Joe Buhrmann, MBA, CFP®, CLU®, ChFC® Senior Financial Planning Practice Management Consultant eMoney Advisor
During an era of evolving consumer preferences, the banking sector is undergoing a profound shift. As customers continue to broaden their perspectives, banking professionals must support their customers' financial wellness by providing holistic financial advice that aligns with individual goals and circumstances. Without adapting, financial institutions will find that loyalty may crumble amid uncertainty.
Abnormal Returns
JANUARY 22, 2024
Podcasts Michael Kitces talks social media with Thomas Kopelman who is the co-founder of AllStreet Wealth. (kitces.com) Zach Conway and Kelsey McKenna talk with Michael Conway, CEO of Conway Wealth, about the multifaceted roles financial advisors play beyond managing investments. (open.spotify.com) Daniel Crosby talks with Richard Shotton who is the founder of Astroten, a consultancy that applies behavioral science to marketing.
Wealth Management
JANUARY 24, 2024
Double-digit percentage point gains in both were notable findings in the annual advisor tech survey revealed at the T3 conference this week, as was the persistently low adoption of cybersecurity tools.
Calculated Risk
JANUARY 25, 2024
The Census Bureau reports New Home Sales in December were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 664 thousand. The previous three months were revised up, combined. Sales of new single‐family houses in December 2023 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 664,000 , according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
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