MEDIA REVIEWS - January 24-31, 2013

Posted in Journal of Financial Planning
Monday, December 24. 2012
I have to say, I really REALLY like the adaptive withdrawal rate concepts proposed in the final article of this month's issue of the Journal, and wonder why such a gem was buried deep in the very back of the magazine. It appears, to me, to be the most elegant withdrawal methodology model we have yet developed as a profession, allowing clients to compare their current situation with a timeline graph, and adjust their spending accordingly.

I also really liked the Bill Winterberg article on "pull" (vs. "push") marketing, which seems to put the whole social media marketing discussion into a nice context. And Dan Moisand's efforts to recommend a good financial planner to a friend in a part of the country where he doesn't know anybody is a classic: if one of us can't figure out how to tell, from the outside, a good financial planner from a sales guy posing as one, how is the public ever going to make these judgments?

Finally, Harold Evensky's column is, as usual, extremely informative about the best recent research coming out of academia. [Read more »] 

MEDIA REVIEWS - December 24-31, 2012

Posted in Journal of Financial Planning
Monday, December 24. 2012
There is no graceful way to say it: this is a pretty awful issue of the Journal, with two research-oriented contributions in the back of the magazine which, if I had been one of the reviewers, I would have rejected.

The high point is the Ross Levin column. Over the years, Levin has provided a chronicle of his challenges in this profession; here, he is working on the difficulties of letting go as his firm enters its succession phase. A lot of much older advisors will sympathize. [Read more »] 

MEDIA REVIEWS - December 16-23, 2012

Posted in Financial Planning
Sunday, December 16. 2012
You're starting to see a lot more "real-world" articles about the next generation of clients, something more than the bland meaningless generalizations that are coming out of the polling organizations. The Dave Grant article is one of the best; it offers a roadmap for making a great impression on a client who has serious generational differences from the mainstream planning population.

But the heart of this issue is the annual technology survey, which this year has broken down its statistics according to categories of advisor. You can see the market leaders in the dually-registered space as well as in the independent RIA world, plus watch the adoption and shifting winds of the portable devices like Android and iPhone. I suspect the magazine collects a lot more data than they're publishing; it would be nice to see this section double in size, with more charts and graphs and rankings. [Read more »] 

Special Dividends

Posted in Client Articles
Tuesday, December 11. 2012
Why are so many companies suddenly boosting their dividend payments? [Read more »] 

"Opposite Day" Investing

Posted in Client Articles
Monday, December 10. 2012
Why do we look for bargains in everything else, and pay a premium for investments? [Read more »] 

MEDIA REVIEWS - December 8-15, 2012

Posted in Financial Advisor
Saturday, December 8. 2012
All of us in the press have tried to write--or help somebody else write--that difficult article about how to find a great financial planner amid the crowd of hucksters, salespeople and pretenders. Roy Diliberto's column may do a better job of this than anything I've seen so far. Also: check out the Rob Brown article if you're currently underweighted equities.

And Jim Picerno's column is one of many, perhaps the most plausible, that talks about the new respectability of technical analysis and charting in the investment world. Even the academics are writing approvingly of what they once castigated.

It's an interesting world... [Read more »] 

Shifting Income

Posted in Client Articles
Monday, December 3. 2012
Taking capital gains may not be a great idea in advance of whatever tax hikes are on the horizon. But what about other measures? [Read more »] 

Contract Planning

Posted in The Profession
Monday, December 3. 2012
How to provide wide-ranging financial advice to any of 6,000 middle-income employees who ask for it. [Read more »] 

To Harvest or Not to Harvest?

Posted in Client Articles
Sunday, December 2. 2012
The potential change in tax rates has turned traditional tax planning on its head. [Read more »] 

MEDIA REVIEWS - December 1-7, 2012

Posted in Investment Advisor
Saturday, December 1. 2012
The heart and soul of Investment Advisor magazine is the consistently excellent practice management columns by Mark Tibergien and Angie Herbers, plus Tom Giachetti on compliance and Dan Skiles on technology--which, of course, are also practice management issues. This month, Tibergien talks about how to create a successful partnership (hint: ask the tough questions early), and Herbers talks about a superior way to have great employees.

For their sakes, I hope the magazine survives; it's awfully thin this month, and many of the articles were written by the editor. [Read more »] 

Inside Information - December 2012

Posted in Inside Information PDFs
Saturday, December 1. 2012
[Read more »] 

Three Faces of Staff Management

Posted in Practice Management
Saturday, December 1. 2012
A recent panel discussion focused on how to get the most out of your employees--and provided a wealth of takeaways. [Read more »] 

Fixing Group-Think

Posted in Portfolio Management
Saturday, December 1. 2012
When did investment committees become a standard part of the profession? And how can we make them more effective?
[Read more »] 

The Wrong--and Right--Candidate

Posted in Bob Veres Blog
Friday, November 30. 2012
My first instinct, when I saw that Elisse Walter had been nominated to replace outgoing SEC chairperson Mary Schapiro, was to go into a long and angry rant. I think it was obvious to everybody but the current Administration that Schapiro's primary focus at the SEC was to advance the causes that she had pursued when she was CEO of FINRA: protect the brokerage regulatory model, make sure nobody went to jail after visible accounting fraud in the brokerage world in 2008, and transfer regulatory oversight of RIAs from the SEC to FINRA--because, well, that's what the brokerage industry was asking for.

Walter, of course, was Schapiro's chief assistant at FINRA before following her over to the SEC to sit on the Board of Governors. It would be hard to find any policy differences between them, which means that once again the fiduciary RIA community has an enemy sitting in the SEC's top chair. I think history will record that Schapiro was, of all SEC commissioners, the least interested in meaningful consumer protection, but it is possible that Walter will become, in time, her chief rival.

If, that is, she is nominated to take over the SEC chair for a full term. It is still possible that the Obama Administration--which seems clueless about fiduciary issues and strangely beholden to a Wall Street community that offered little support for his candidacy--will nominate somebody else. Bloomberg Press wants Sallie Krawcheck, currently employed at Merrill Lynch, to take over that role--which sounds like Wall Street offering the president a choice of cronies who are cozy with the brokerage industry.

What I find myself wondering, though, is why we keep hiring people from the nonfiduciary world to run the regulator of fiduciary advisors? If we ask that question, posed in that way, it becomes obvious that Wall Street is controlling the selection process--the same Wall Street that fears being held to a consumer-focused strict fiduciary standard because, well, how can you make an obscene profit by putting the clients' best interests first? This is, of course, the same Wall Street that Congressional leaders declared would be reined in after they precipitated the 2008 meltdown.

I think the RIA world should get behind another candidate, and I think I see a plausible one: David Tittsworth, who currently serves as executive director and executive vice president of the Investment Adviser Association. I finally met Tittsworth in person recently, and of course have followed his work for years. He's thoughtful, smart, he knows the RIA industry better than anybody Wall Street is likely to recommend, and my impression from dozens of communications and the personal contact is that he is a genuinely good person--something I cannot imagine myself saying about Schapiro and Walter. They are great organizational infighters, terrific politicians, sly, shrewd and very smart. But "good" is not the first word that comes to mind about either of them.

Tittsworth may not want the job, but it seems to me that if we can pull top executives from the brokerage industry's primary organization to run the SEC, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to do the same thing from the RIA world's.

Do you agree? [Read more »] 

MEDIA REVIEWS - November 24-30, 2012

Posted in Financial Advisor
Saturday, November 24. 2012
I suppose I'm probably the only person who didn't receive the November issue of Financial Advisor in the mail but, well, I didn't, so I can't give you the page numbers of the articles. I can, however, say that I'm skeptical that the former chief operating officer at UBS Private Wealth can run a conflict-free service helping clients evaluate their financial advisor (see the Mary Rowland column), and I wonder how anybody can believe that Advent has completely changed its attitude about working closely with the financial planning community (see the Joel Bruckenstein article). And I find myself wondering whether Advizent can attract enough paying members to effectively move the needle marketing the financial planning profession, and if they do, whether some consumers will question the $25,000 to $100,000 annual fees the firm charges to evaluate these advisory firms and give them a seal of approval. How often will they charge $100,000 and then NOT hand over this seal of approval?

Perhaps the most interesting example of this disturbing wave of non-skeptical reporting is the Andy Gluck column, which is not given a "high" rating after reporting that a technology provider of online investment tools is collecting fees from product manufacturers, and then evaluating what products (exclusively from those vendors and peddlers) are appropriate for clients. This is the future, we are told. It sounds like a grim one. [Read more »] 
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