Build A Client Portfolio That Suits Your Strengths

There have been no retroactive situations in the last 25 years where the Tax Act increased taxes and the effective date was prior to the date of enactment. Still, that does not mean it will continue with any tax increases this time.

With the country just emerging from lockdown, where’s the crash already? The original grave dancer, Sam Zell, has left the cemetery and is “following the pack and spending big on something safer,” Peter Grant wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

Last week provided investors with a fresh batch of data carrying the potential to heavily affect the inflation debate. Tuesday brought us the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for June, while Wednesday saw the release of the Producer Price Index (PPI) for June.

With the U.S. economy humming, corporate profits flowing and stock prices peaking, investors on Wall Street are beginning to pose an anxious question: Is it all downhill from here? Many of the U.S. government’s pandemic relief efforts are fading.

Being an advisor in 2021 has introduced us to countless new digital tools that allow us to optimize our client service. Although our focus on technology has grown, it’s important to remember that our most valuable tool for success remains the ability to connect.

Nationally, inflation rose at a 5.4% annual pace; in Los Angeles and Orange counties, it was 4%. The worst inflation picture since 2008 might nudge the Fed to ease its cheap money policies. Those efforts created an economic oddity — mortgage rates below inflation.

Now is the perfect time to check in with your clients and remind them what financial planning really is and begin to tie their investment reviews into their financial plan.

An estimated 3 million people nationwide have left their jobs earlier than expected since the pandemic began in March 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Despite lofty expectations, results exceeded expectations by one of the biggest margins ever in the first quarter. So what will companies do for an encore?

The Federal Reserve says its low interest rate policies are providing “powerful support” for the economy as it recovers from the coronavirus pandemic. The Fed has kept its benchmark interest rate near zero while continuing to buy $120 billion a month in Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities.

Global stock markets fell Thursday as fears grew over what strong inflation and a new wave of Covid-19 might mean. Europe’s top benchmarks closed with losses of more than 1.5 percent following some heavy drops in Asia. In New York, the Dow Jones index also slumped in midday exchanges.

—Federal Reserve officials started discussing at their meeting last month the timing and mechanics of reducing their huge monthly bond purchases, which are used to keep longer-term interest rates in check. The Fed is buying $120 billion a month in Treasury securities and mortgage-backed bonds.

Through the first six months of the year, the S&P 500 was up 14.4%, led by the same energy and financial stocks that limped through last year’s economic collapse. That ranks as the second-best performance for the first half of a year since 1998.

After being dealt a stunning setback by an appeals court, federal prosecutors in Delaware have declined to retry four former executives for the only financial institution to be criminally charged in connection with the federal bank bailout program in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who in 1999 had the privilege of purchasing company stock for one-tenth of a penny per share. He bought 1.7 million shares for just $1,700, and he did so in a powerhouse retirement account known as a Roth IRA.

Just prior to the holiday, several clients asked me if there were anything they should change with their investments, especially with inflation looming on the horizon. Currently, many economists see mixed indicators and aren’t convinced that future inflation is a certainty.

At UC Berkeley, high-level economists are offering some calming advice: A measure of inflation is inevitable as the U.S. economy comes back online, but it will likely be modest. And it will almost certainly blow over as the economy stabilizes.

There’s a long way to go, but it has been a great year for stock bulls, a historically bad year for bonds, and a great year for the economy. We recently found these four charts that we think all investors need to see as we head into July.

Billionaire Warren Buffett says the one constant throughout the coronavirus pandemic has been that it has been difficult to predict how it would affect the economy, but clearly it has devastated many small businesses and individuals.

LGBTQ Americans have big goals when it comes to retirement, according to Lincoln Financial Group’s 2021 Retirement Power Study.

Many stocks have stagnated over recent months. While we remain overweight on stocks relative to bonds, this week we explore three things that worry us—and could make the market more susceptible to a pullback as we enter the second half of 2021.

Departing from the traditional fundraising methods, more charities are looking for new ways, and currencies, for people to donate. The latest way is through NFTs and cryptocurrency.

The human brain has six functions, three of which are defense mechanisms that prevent people from accepting potential risks and moving to protect their future finances. All six are worth keeping in mind when approaching the topic of risk management with clients.

Black and Hispanic Americans were already at a disadvantage with retirement savings. Now the pandemic disrupted their employment more than it did for whites, according to a new survey.

Women today assume a greater role in driving our economy in both the public and private sectors, but there is still a high level of disparity between the sexes. As a result, women may need more support to overcome this inequality.

Bitcoin and other digital asset prices are crashing now, but Bitcoin is doing what Bitcoin does.

Secure Retirement Institute research estimates that IRA rollovers represented approximately $565 billion in 2019, and jumped to $623 billion in 2020 as pandemic-related disruption led to an increase in the number of people leaving their employers.

The economy is growing at a healthy clip, and that has accelerated inflation, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell says in written testimony to be delivered Tuesday at a congressional oversight hearing. Still, Powell reiterated his view that inflation’s recent jump to a 13-year high would prove temporary.

Democrats favor an infrastructure package five times as large as Republicans are proposing, to be paid for in part with at least $2.5 trillion in new taxes.

In the early days of 2021, the outlook for inflation was peppered with words such as “mild” and “moderate.” Inflation, the year-over-year increase in consumer prices, was expected to rise but just slightly above its historic benchmark of 2%.

Tech soared on the back of Wednesday’s post-meeting press conference with Fed Chair Jerome Powell, where he referred to this June FOMC meeting as the “talking about, talking about” tapering meeting. The Fed just regained control of the inflation and interest rate narrative. The market has been waiting in anticipation for the Fed to start tapering its $120…

Investors seem inclined to build wealth until 45, and then turn to retirement-saving mode, according to a Money Morning survey.

Asking good questions is an essential skill to building trust with the people you serve and advise. Here are seven questions to help you establish a personal connection with clients.

Women already faced a significant gap in their retirement savings before the pandemic put those golden year dreams further out of reach, according to findings from a Harris poll.

Not sure how exactly you’d overcome some of your challenges? We’ve all been there. Consider connecting with a more experienced advisor, joining a financial services association such as the Million Dollar Round Table.

Broker-dealers, investment advisors and insurance distributors realize that they must prepare to comply with the Department of Labor’s investment advice guidance, but what do they need to do?

No aspect of life in America escaped unscathed from the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the U.S. Pandemic Misery index developed by the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research, 80 percent of Americans experience a coronavirus-related hardship over the course of the pandemic.

Perhaps once considered a passing fad, sustainable investing has solidified its place at the investing table and will likely hold that position for years to come, according to a new study released by Allianz Life.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a New York-based couple with insider trading in the stock of the pharmaceutical company where one of them worked as a clinical trial project manager.

An impactful leader must be intentional around “eight pearls of leadership,” according to a speaker at Tuesday’s Million Dollar Round Table virtual annual meeting.

Alex Kane traces the origin of his Big Idea to revolutionize sports betting to his junior year at Drexel University, when he and his father placed a wager on an obscure Thai golfer to win the 2016 Masters Tournament.

There are a lot of moving pieces to a successful retirement. You need to check all the boxes, and hopefully well before you actually retire. What follows will get you thinking.

Many professional investors say AMC, GameStop and other meme stocks have hit heights untethered to reality and are primed for a steep fall, but that’s not stopping an army of smaller-pocketed and novice investors from holding their ground and promising to take their prices “to the moon.”

Because registered investment advisors are held to the fiduciary standard, RIAs might be tempted to think they have the Department of Labor’s investment rules covered automatically, but they would be wrong, says two Faegre Drinker attorneys.

College cannot possibly teach you all there is to know about financial planning. The education must continue after the degree is in hand. Here are four resources to help develop a deeper knowledge-base of the financial planning profession.

When Ken Frazier steps down from Merck next month, there will be four Black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. One of them is Thasunda Brown Duckett, who runs TIAA, a financial services firm that manages more than $1 trillion in assets.

When people are retiring before reaching age 65, it can be challenging to find affordable health care insurance. If you do not qualify for a subsidy from the government health exchange, it could cost $800 or more per month.

The U.S. Federal Reserve, for its part, usually seems to act as if stock-based wealth does help drive spending and employment. After looking at the U.S. on a county-by-county basis, the study finds that after large market shifts, people spend about 3.2 cents per year out of each increased dollar of stock wealth they possess.

As Baby Boomer advisors age, business continuity and succession planning are on everyone’s radar. The average age of financial advisors in the United States exceeds 50, and, according to Cerulli and Associates, less than 12% of advisors are under the age of 35.

The Federal Reserve warned that credit scores — the all-powerful number that can determine if a consumer is able to qualify for a loan, rent a home or even buy car insurance — might have gotten less reliable during the coronavirus pandemic.

Built by the sons of slaves, the Tulsa Greenwood community in the early 20th century grew into America’s most prosperous Black community, only to be destroyed in 18 hours of murder and destruction by a white mob.

Planners and advisors say not many clients are asking about ESG investing, but are becoming interested the more clients learn about them.

With the end of the 2020 filing season upon us, now is the time to become aware of major changes for 2021. But be prepared, politicians are making noise in preparation for another fun-filled year of late breaking changes.

In an era when regulators are tightening standards around fee transparency and disclosure, it is clear than consumers want clarity and are not finding it, according to the Hearts & Wallets survey.

Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average interest on a 30- year fixed-rate mortgage is back up to 3%, with fees of 0.6%. The average size of a purchase loan rose to $411,400 last week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the highest since February.

A 2014 Gallup poll indicates that most Americans now retire at age 62. That is a good starting point when planning for retirement.

The April meeting ended the Fed members’ decision to keep interest rates close to zero and they pledged to continue buying $80 billion in Treasury bonds and $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities each month until “substantial progress” has been made.

If we have learned anything during this last year its how to keep connections thriving and growing in a virtual experience. The NexGen community’s No. 1 goal is to constantly be building new & lasting connections for its members.

Nine out of 10 financial advisors surveyed believe it is important to manage risk in client portfolios. Moreover, 88% believe it is more important to effectively manage risk in their clients’ portfolios than have the highest gains.

Most of the time (55%), older spouses are caregiving alone as husbands or wives come to the end of their lives, without help from their children, other family members or friends or paid home health aides, according to research published earlier this year.

When leukemia patients were assisted with costs related to medical expenses and worked with financial professionals, they had a significant improvement on health outcomes, according to a study.

We didn’t understand how to use fiscal policy in the early stages of the Depression. Economists generally clung to Cambridge tradition of Alfred Marshall (whose textbook from the early 1890s still dominated) which held that markets would solve any economic problem if left alone.

At the meeting Fed officials said the U.S. economy was quickly strengthening and that inflation was showing signs of picking up. The Fed also said it would continue buying $120 billion in bonds each month to try to keep longer-term borrowing rates low.

Most retired clients or those who are working towards retirement have only one question: How much money can they generate to last the rest of their lives?

So far, the White House has largely responded to these setbacks by either downplaying them or arguing that they amount to one-time aberrations related to the unusual circumstances tied to the rebound from the coronavirus pandemic.

Nearly three-fourths (72%) of advisors and financial professionals are very concerned about tax increases over the next four years, according to Nationwide’s Washington Impact Survey.

It’s embarrassing to admit this but in our earnings season preview on April 12, when the consensus estimate reflected a nearly 24% increase, we wrote that S&P 500 Index earnings growth for the first quarter could potentially exceed 30%.

The National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Optimism Index rose to 99.8 in April, an increase of 1.6 points from March. The Optimism Index has increased 4.8 points over the past three months since January but a record 44% of owners reported job openings they could not be filled.

Long before they receive a dementia diagnosis, many people start losing their ability to manage their finances and make sound decisions as their memory, organizational skills and self-control falter, studies show.

Every bear market has the same thing in common; they happened precisely after they hit an Elliot Wave 5 target. When it comes to stock market forecasting, a picture is worth much more than a thousand words if you pay attention to it.

The multiple fallouts from COVID-19 will be revealed for years. But one reality is clear now: Working mothers were particularly punished by the coronavirus pandemic. Many women lost service sector and personal care jobs, which were the first to disappear.