Beyond the Noise

Every year, the markets provide us with lessons on the prudent investment strategy. Many times, markets offer investors remedial courses, covering lessons it taught in previous years. That’s why one of my favorite sayings is that there’s nothing new in investing—only investment history you don’t yet know. Last year supplied 10 important lessons. As you […]

We have data for 91 calendar years (or 1,092 months) of U.S. investment returns over the period 1927 through 2016. The average monthly return to the S&P 500 has been 0.95%, and the average quarterly return was 3.0%. With that background, here’s a short, four-question quiz: If we remove the returns from the best 91 […]

Dividend strategies have drawn increasing interest from investors around the world as central banks have pursued both quantitative and qualitative easy monetary policies, keeping interest rates at what have been exceptionally low levels since 2008. But this preference isn’t entirely new; it has long been known many investors have a preference for cash dividends. From […]

Dan Solin on the power of giving. Read the Article By clicking on any of the links, you acknowledge that they are solely for your convenience, and do not necessarily imply any affiliations, sponsorships, endorsements or representations whatsoever by us regarding third-party Web sites. We are not responsible for the content, availability or privacy policies […]

Harry Markowitz received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1990 for his contributions to the body of work known as “modern portfolio theory.” Probably his greatest contribution was to turn the focus away from analyzing the risk and expected return of individual investments to considering how its addition impacts the risk and expected return […]

In a July 2017 Q&A with WealthManagement.com, Western Asset Management CIO Ken Leech asserts that passive investing is unlikely to play as large a role in fixed income as it does now in equities because active managers outperform their benchmarks much more in the bond market than they do in the stock market. While the trend toward […]

With the Shiller CAPE 10 near 30 (29.7 as I write this), it’s likely you have been reading articles that quote gurus who claim the market is on its last legs/breath due to excessive valuations. And the amount of calls I’m getting from concerned investors (especially, it seems, those who hold a certain set of political beliefs) has […]

Too often, I’ve heard this all-too-familiar story. A client brings in an annuity policy to review, either for themselves or a family member. They bought it to create a steady annual flow of income on later life, as insurance against unexpected longevity. But what we see is a jaw-dropping set of numbers that reveal poor […]

Earlier this week, we looked at the importance of incorporating different types of risk—specifically, human capital risk—into an overall financial plan. Today I will focus on mortality and longevity risk, and using “tax alpha” strategies to improve the odds of achieving your financial goals. Mortality Risk For those families whose human capital makes up a substantial […]