Category Archives for Blog
Avoid These Investing Mistakes to Reach Your Retirement Goals (Part 1)
Have you started thinking about retirement and begun to worry about what life in retirement will be like if you don’t build a whopping big nest egg?
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What is Portfolio Construction?
An investment portfolio should be built based on a client’s risk and return objectives along with an assessment of their constraints. While downside protection is a common focus, the advisor must ensure
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How Much Money Makes You Wealthy, Wealthier, or Wealthiest?
Sure, having such a high income means you can afford to buy a lot of things. More importantly for our purpose here, it means you can save and invest a lot, which lets you build wealth far more easily than
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What is Estate Planning and Why is It Important?
“In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” These famous words attributed to Benjamin Franklin over 200 years ago still ring true today. Minimizing the amount of taxes you have to pay
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Back to the Investment Basics (Part 5)
So far in our investment basics series, we’ve explored the history of investing; how important it is to save (so you have money to invest); how to invest efficiently in broad markets; and why to avoid
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Back to the Investment Basics (Part 4)
In our last piece, we described our marvelous markets, and how to account for their being both robust and random at the same time. Today, we’ll look at how stock pricing works, and why Nobel laureate
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Back to the Investment Basics (Part 3)
In our last piece, we introduced the importance of saving, which is the first of five basics that have served investors well over time. Today, we’ll look at where stock market returns really come from,
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Back to the Investment Basics (Part 2)
In our last piece, we wrote about how recency bias can damage your investments by causing current crises to loom large, while rewriting your memories of past challenges. Recency tricks us into overpaying
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Back to the Investment Basics (Part 1)
There were so many big events competing for our attention this summer … said nearly every investor, almost every summer, ever.
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Pursuing a Better Investment Experience (Part 5)
Welcome to the pursuing a better investment experience series. We are going to review two topic points regarding market headlines and what you can control, let’s get started.
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Pursuing a Better Investment Experience (Part 4)
Welcome to the pursuing a better investment experience series. We are going to review two topic points regarding market timing and emotions, let’s get started. The First Point – Avoid
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Pursuing a Better Investment Experience (Part 3)
Welcome to the pursuing a better investment experience series. We are going to review two topic points regarding market returns and diversification, let’s get started. The First Point
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Pursuing a Better Investment Experience (Part 2)
Welcome to the pursuing a better investment experience series. We are going to review two topic points regarding market performance facts, let’s get started. The First Point – Resist
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Pursuing a Better Investment Experience (Part 1)
Welcome to the pursuing a better investment experience series. We are going to review two topic points regarding market facts, let’s get started. The First Point – Embrace Market
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Rising Rates: Short-Term Pain for Long-Term Gain?
Investors have likely noticed the improved opportunity set in fixed income due to higher yields. And yet some investors may be hesitant to take advantage of higher yields because of concerns about
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The Stock Market Can Be Less Risky Than Cash
Common sense will sometimes cost you a lot of money. Comparing inflation-adjusted returns shows when investing in the stock market was less risky than cash. Do You Own any Stocks? A Gallup poll shows that
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Want to be a Better Investor?
I was in my early 30s and finally managed to scrape enough money together to start investing. I picked a high-flying mutual fund offered by a popular asset manager at the time. For a while, it made me
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What is Sudden Wealth Syndrome?
C’mon, admit it… Even if you’re super savvy financially, I’m sure you’ve occasionally bought a lottery ticket (or several). I know I have, when the jackpot is so astronomically high that it more
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Market Timing Traps and Temptations
Decades of tracking and analyzing investment portfolio returns keep telling the same story., market timing behaviors are traps. Even though we should know it was just dumb luck, can we get a round of applause
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The ABCs of Behavioral Biases – Conclusion
We’ll wrap our series, the ABCs of Behavioral Biases, by repeating our initial premise: Your own behavioral biases are often the greatest threat to your financial well-being. We hope we’ve demonstrated
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The ABCs of Behavioral Biases (S–Z)
We’re coming in for a landing on our alphabetic run-down of behavioral biases. Today, we’ll present the final line-up: sunk cost fallacy and tracking error regret. Sunk Cost Fallacy What is it? Sunk
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The ABCs of Behavioral Biases (O–R)
So many financial behavioral biases, so little time! Today, let’s take a few minutes to cover our next batch of biases: overconfidence, pattern recognition, and recency. Overconfidence What is it? No
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The ABCs of Behavioral Biases (H–O)
There are so many investment-impacting behavioral biases, we could probably identify at least one for nearly every letter of the alphabet. Today, we’ll continue with the most significant ones by looking
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ABCs of Behavioral Biases (A–F)
Welcome back to our “ABCs of Behavioral Biases.” Today, we’ll get started by introducing you to four self-inflicted biases that knock a number of investors off-course: anchoring, blind spot, confirmation,
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ABCs of Behavioral Biases – Series Intro
By now, you’ve probably heard the news: Your own behavioral biases are often the greatest threat to your financial well-being. As investors, we leap before we look. We stay when we should go. We
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Ideal Investment Portfolio Management: Principle 10 in Evidence-Based Investing
We wrap our 10-part series on the principles of evidence-based investing with how a fiduciary financial advisor can add value to your investment portfolio management. Most importantly, by combining financial
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Six Hacks for Maintaining Investment Discipline: Principle 9 in Evidence-Based Investing
Investment discipline is all about being able to see past the daily market distractions to maintain a long-term perspective. A big challenge here is knowing how to identify and ignore your own emotional
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Emotional Investing Is Risky Investing: Principle 8 in Evidence-Based Investing
Many people struggle with emotional investing. That is, they find it difficult to make consistent, rational investment decisions, instead of reacting to current market conditions out of fear, excitement,
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Why Stick with a Globally Diversified Portfolio? Principle 7 in Evidence-Based Investing
Why buy and hold a globally diversified portfolio instead of reacting to breaking news? Political, social, and economic headlines come and go. But you never know which market segments will outperform from
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Diversify Your Investment Universe: Principle 6 in Evidence-Based Investing
Holding securities across many market segments, expanding your investment universe, can help manage overall risk. But diversifying within your home market may not be enough. Global diversification can
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