MEDIA REVIEWS - June 8-15, 2011

Posted in Financial Planning
Saturday, June 11. 2011
Financial Planning magazine does the best job of all the magazines of collecting charts and data in the annual "broker-dealer survey" start-of-Summer ritual, and we see that this is a recovery year for the industry after two negative years in a row. True, the number of reps are down overall, but revenues are up a median 13.2%. These statistics also tell us, every year, that all the talk about "fee-based" services is mostly talk; the majority of revenues at all but a very few BDs are earned through commission sales, and the average assets under management in most systems is extremely low compared with the average fee-compensated advisor. The coverage is not perfect; why are insurance and brokerage BDs mixed in with independents, rather than given their own category rankings? This one change alone would have given us a much clearer look at the state of the industry.

You can see major trends in the profession being shaped through the profile of Richie Lee in Dallas and the Blue Ocean Marketing article, and Pamela Christensen's article on preplanning services (chiefly budget and debt planning) will be interesting to any advisor interested in taking on clients who have high cash flow but little in the way of investable assets. Finally, I thought this was the best article by Craig Israelsen in years--about how to select funds based on their value-added in the rebalancing process. [Read more »] 

Inside Information - June 2011

Posted in Inside Information PDFs
Monday, June 6. 2011
[Read more »] 

MEDIA REVIEWS - June 1-7, 2011

Posted in Investment Advisor
Thursday, June 2. 2011
If you want, you can read down past the 'high relevancy' articles to see what I thought about the cover article in this month's issue of Investment Advisor ('Agents of Change' is the title of the article), but your time is much better spent looking at the annual broker-dealer statistics. The 'President's Poll' gives us information that is kind of obvious, and one might yearn for the days when the magazine was courageous enough to publish the average payout rates for all the BDs, or calculate the profit margins, or give us the percentage of total revenues coming from variable annuities vs. 'fee-based' assets under management, so we could determine for ourselves whether the reps of this or that BD were indeed 'fee-based' or leaning hard toward the sales/commission side of the fence. All we get here are various measures of size, though the average 'production' figures are interesting because they give us a hint about which BDs are doing the most to benefit their reps.

Beyond that, Philip Palaveev, Mark Tibergien, Angie Herbers, Tom Giachetti and Dan Skiles are reliably good at giving excellent practice management insights, and we learn that the independent BDs are about to allow their reps to engage in social media activities, although they will still be carefully supervised by their responsible adults in the compliance department. [Read more »] 

Playing Chicken with the Debt Ceiling

Posted in Client Articles
Monday, May 30. 2011
How the U.S. sovereign debt debate is REALLY being discussed in Washington. [Read more »] 

MEDIA REVIEWS - May 24-31, 2011

Posted in Journal of Financial Planning
Sunday, May 29. 2011
The highlight of this issue of the Journal, and maybe the highlight for the past several years, is an interesting variation of the Bengen research. The "Save Savings Rates" article by Wade Pfau looks, not at the safety of various distribution rates, but the safety of various savings rates under different economic conditions. Looking at the historical record of returns, and taking into account the benefits of hindsight, it looks at what percent of income you would have had to save each year in whatever return environment you accumulated in, taking into account the return environment you are distributing in. As it turns out, those who save in a difficult return environment tend to get a break in the distribution period--and vice versa.

As I say in the review, this is an article you will probably end up reading at some point in your career; you might as well do it now. It's worth your expenditure of time.

Meanwhile, Dan Moisand has put on the record another great argument for not allowing FINRA to take over as the SRO for RIAs, and he brings up the fact that FINRA sold out of more than half a billion dollars worth of auction-rate securities in its own portfolio before concluding that they were not well-structured and poorly-disclosed. You read this and immediately wonder whether the SEC should launch an insider-trading investigation. If this were any private sector entity, the case would be a no-brainer.

In The Economist, notice the article that wonders whether we have entered another Tech Bubble (with Internet-related companies this time) that was published BEFORE the LinkedIn IPO went into a feeding frenzy. And the demographic analysis is very interesting, including the chart that tells you the ten most populous countries in the world in 2100 (Nigeria and the Congo are high on the list)--plus an article that wonders if China has enough people. [Read more »] 

LISTING SUCCESS

Posted in Practice Management
Sunday, May 29. 2011
What's the best way to facilitate staff development and internal delegation? Start by creating clear checklists of what you expect. [Read more »] 

Three Problems In Search of a Solution

Posted in The Profession
Sunday, May 29. 2011
A Washington insider talks about the major problems that your politicians are not addressing effectively. [Read more »] 

Bailout Prevention Therapy

Posted in The Profession
Sunday, May 29. 2011
What can we do to prevent another 2008? [Read more »] 

Walt & Roy, Resiliency And the Lizard Brain

Posted in Conferences and Education
Sunday, May 29. 2011
Three different "life lessons presentations offer perspectives on customer service, the power of the subconscious and the principles of resiliency. [Read more »] 

The Next Tech Bubble?

Posted in Client Articles
Sunday, May 29. 2011
Why investment professionals are experiencing a sense of deja vu these days. [Read more »] 

The Price of Dying

Posted in Client Articles
Sunday, May 29. 2011
Planning for funeral costs can make an enormous difference--financially and psychologically. [Read more »] 

TACTICAL CONFLICTS

Posted in Parting Thoughts
Sunday, May 29. 2011
Yet another conflict-of-interest to explore. [Read more »] 

MEDIA REVIEWS - May 16-23, 2011

Posted in Financial Planning
Tuesday, May 24. 2011
This is the first issue of Financial Planning under the guidance of its new editor, Scott Wenger, a former employee of the Wall Street Journal and managing editor/money and business at the NY Daily News. And I hope this is not a coincidence: when have I ever given so many "high" relevance ratings?

The highest of the "high" are an article by Sonya Britt and John Grable on client risk tolerance assessment, and Joe Tomlinson's deep evaluation of your clients' options when they start converting their portfolios to income generators. The latter article offers a pretty good illustration of the tradeoffs between future value of the portfolio at death and reduction of uncertainty during the retirement years leading up to it.

Meanwhile, Ed Slott does his usual great job of keeping us informed about traditional and Roth IRAs, this time giving you advice on how to handle clients who experience sticker shock on the tax bill associated with their already-completed Roth conversions. You might also look at the Kevin Bishopp article entitled "Mapping It Out;" you can pretty much skip the article itself and look at the Client Engagement Road Map graphic, which lets you map out two years worth of client meetings. [Read more »] 

MEDIA REVIEWS - May 8-15, 2011

Posted in Financial Advisor
Monday, May 16. 2011
Andy Gluck is trying to chronicle the ups and downs of the various professional associations, and what that means in terms of power and influence in the current debates over fiduciary, FINRA etc., but having just returned from the NAPFA National Conference, I find myself wondering why he doesn't put NAPFA anywhere in the equation--or the AICPA either.

Elsewhere in this issue, we learn about a new Financial Therapy Association, a new planning tool for calculating sustainable withdrawals from a retirement portfolio, and if you are still rebalancing client portfolios using Excel spreadsheets, then David Lawrence's column was written for you. [Read more »] 

Passing the Torch

Posted in Practice Management
Monday, May 9. 2011
This is a detailed look at how to address potentially the most complicated challenge facing many advisors today. [Read more »] 
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