The term “Strategic Wealth Management” originated from the full-service brokerage firms, in part, as a way to elevate their status in the eyes of high net worth investors who had viewed them primarily as stockbrokers. It was also thought to more aptly describe the full range of investment services the brokerage firms began offering in [...]
Continue Reading →ETFs, (exchange traded fund) and indexed mutual funds are emerging as the investment of choice for investors who are discovering the virtues of passive investing. Not surprisingly, they have both seen an explosion of growth and are especially popular choices for retirement plans and investors with a long time horizon. With all of the attention they [...]
Continue Reading →Entrepreneurs and self-employed people devote an untold number of hours towards their business, wearing multiple hats and juggling an infinite number of tasks. For many, their business is their future security which is why they are willing to spend so much time working in it. Because of that, and the fact that most business owners [...]
Continue Reading →I’m not about to make any stock market predictions for the New Year, but one thing I can say with nearly 100% certainty is that there will be more uncertainty. If all we could count on is “more of the same”, we might even find comfort in that. After all, we now know what it [...]
Continue Reading →As the wild stock market gyrations continue, investors are reawakening to the performance benchmarks of their mutual funds to see if their fund choices are at least doing better than the market indexes. With most actively managed mutual funds underperforming the current market, investors are, once again, feverishly moving their funds out of stock funds [...]
Continue Reading →For the largest generation in history, retirement dreams have turned into pipe dreams as the “new normal” economy seems to be taking hold. Now crossing the retirement threshold at a rate of 10,000 per day, Baby Boomers are reassessing their retirement plans, and some are even wondering if they will ever be able to retire. [...]
Continue Reading →Unless you’re a Ron Paul enthusiast, you may have missed it among the relatively few minutes he has been given in the seemingly endless number of Republican debates; that is his call for the abolition of the Federal Reserve and a return to the gold standard. Other politicians, including more recently Newt Gingrich have made [...]
Continue Reading →So, the big news hit the wires over the weekend: Nine Eurozone Countries to be Downgraded by Standard & Poor’s. Excuse me while I yawn. Was anybody actually surprised by this? For the few people who thought the Eurozone experiment would actually work – 16 countries with completely different cultures, economies, and fiscal policies give [...]
Continue Reading →This bear market is like we are sailing right into the midst of a perfect storm: Deadly turmoil in Mid East and North Africa, cataclysmic events in Japan, the Eurozone on the brink, and we’re staring into the teeth of our fiscal meltdown right here at home. Just when investors were beginning to feel good enough [...]
Continue Reading →Over the past few years, municipal bonds may have fallen out of favor due to the fact that, until recently, the returns in the stock and bond markets were generating steady returns. Now, with the market continuing its wild gyrations, and the bond market hanging on the edge of uncertain fed policies, investor attention has [...]
Continue Reading →We always like to end the year with a note of optimism to spur everyone on to bigger and better things in the coming year. Unfortunately, that is becoming difficult to do. Little has changed in the dour outlook of the economy, and little has been done to change its course much over the coming [...]
Continue Reading →As the jobs market continues to drag along, millions of people are deciding to go it alone by taking the entrepreneurial plunge. Many are launching starting a new business right from their kitchen table and some are harboring dreams of the “next big thing.” In almost all cases, starting a new business requires some amount [...]
Continue Reading →This generation of parents, who have high hopes of a quality college education for their children, face challenges unlike any faced by generations before them, especially when it comes to saving for college. On the one hand, they helplessly watch as college costs accelerate by as much as 30% per year, and on the other, [...]
Continue Reading →No matter what type of investor you are, this has been a year which you probably would like to forget. Stock investors have been flung around like a rag doll on a runaway roller coaster, and bond investors are finding it increasingly difficult to capture higher yields. And, if you have your money in savings [...]
Continue Reading →My defensive investment strategy for 2012 is to deal with and reduce the market volatility. With the Euro-crisis coming to a head and continuing deadlock on a resolution of our own debt and deficit crisis, uncertainty and volatility will continue to reign in the year ahead. But then, when has there ever been certainty in [...]
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