My Comments: This has absolutely nothing to do with retirement planning or how to invest and manage your money. But I find it compelling, given that my life expectancy is far shorter than that of my children and grandchildren. I decided to share it with those of you who may have similar observations about how …
Category: Alternative Investments
Series of posts dealing with Alternative Investments
Get Ready For A Bear Market
My Comments: This person may be right, or not. Yesterdays sell-off sure was ominous but you never “know” until it’s too late. One way to profit from the downturn is with alternative investments. Only very few investment managers use them as a matter of course when promoting their skill set to the public. Those of …
The Next Bear Market?
My Thoughts: Like a broken clock that is right twice a day, my talking about the coming market crash will be seen as truth. Some, including me, think the downturn has already started. Something will trigger a free fall, and then it'll start going back up. There are strategies that will help you survive and …
Alternatives Growing in Portfolios as Markets Stumble
Nontraditional investments could grow to 10%-15% of mutual funds in 10 years, according to Cerulli My Comment: For at least 18 months, I’ve been including a program featuring “alternative investments” in my client portfolios. The logic behind this is/was to build portfolios that are less likely to tumble when interest rates finally start an upward …
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How to Play Defense Against Volatility in Your Portfolio
My Comment: It’s sometimes helpful to look back a few months, sometimes a few years, to see what I was thinking at the time and to compare what was then with what we see now. For example, as investment advisors we have long embraced the idea of a diversified portfolio to minimize risk. Think Enron; …
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Designing and Evaluating A Strategy on Alternatives
My Comment: Alternative investments, in my opinion, are a key ingredient in contemporary investment portfolio design. The one hiccup that caught the attention of financial advisors like me was the extent to which bonds and stocks both declined in value in the fall of 2008 and early 2009. We've always tried to diversify a portfolio …
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Fidelity: 401(k) Balances Drop 12% in 3Q
(I don’t know about you but I’m getting really tired of all the woe and gloom that pervades our lives. At first glance, this post is much the same. But if you get to the end and have time, watch the presentation I created by clicking on the last line. For me its a ray …
Volatility Can Kill Your Variable Life Insurance Policy
The idea behind this post comes from an article by Gordon A. Schaller Several years ago you purchased a life insurance policy. You did this even though you always thought life insurance was a bad investment with returns of only 3-4%. However, this policy was supposed to be different; the premiums could be flexible and …
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Square Pegs AND Round Holes
I’ve recently realized that for the past several years as an investment advisor, I’ve been doing my best to force square pegs into round holes. And it hasn’t worked very well. You’d think with all my experience, it would have become obvious much sooner, but apart from being uncomfortable, I had no clear understanding until …
Be Careful What You Put Into Your IRA
Individual retirement accounts (IRAs) exist in many forms. In general, if you have income from working for yourself or someone else, you may set up and contribute to an IRA. Most of the more than $3.4 trillion held in IRA accounts are held by the major brokerage firms and invested in stocks, bonds and mutual …
Helping Define Your Financial Future 