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Evidence Based Investing: The Importance of Education

It is our desire and intent to educate clients about how capital markets work and to provide them with the information necessary for their financial well-being.   The advice to follow an evidence-based approach to investing is significantly different from most of the advice heard on Wall Street and in the financial media. It also…

Evidence Based Investing: The Five-Point Plan

Point 1: Markets Are Efficient Public information is of little fundamental value. New information is so quickly incorporated into asset prices that use of this knowledge cannot be expected to consistently yield superior risk-adjusted returns.   Point 2: Risk and Expected Reward Are Related Investors who expect or need to achieve higher returns must accept…

What Makes a College Essay Stand Out From the Rest

Seth Allen, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, Pomona College, Claremont, Calif. College essays carry far more weight than they have in previous decades. With a record number of students applying for college, admissions offices have become highly selective when considering student applications. While each school has its own criteria, schools typically look for students…

Buffett’s Basketball Billion by Jim Whiddon

March has truly gone mad as the inimitable Warren Buffett has teamed up with Quicken Loans to produce perhaps one of the most brilliant marketing boondoggles and at the same time one of the most bogus prize offers ever devised. And it will almost certainly work beautifully with no one to claim the reward. The…

Grit is Critical to Your Success by Dan Solin

Abraham Lincoln first ran for the Illinois General Assembly in 1832. He lost. Subsequently, he lost a race for the House of Representatives and two races for the Senate. The love of his life died in 1835. He had a nervous breakdown in 1836. He campaigned for a vice-presidential nomination and lost. He persevered and,…

Changing Lanes by Neal Merbaum

“My name is Neal, and I’m a lane changer. It’s been two weeks since I changed lanes — and that’s only because it’s been two weeks since I was on the highway!” If there were an organization similar to Alcoholics Anonymous for chronic lane changers, I would join. I know I have a problem, but…

Planning Through the Generations

Multigenerational planning involves the transfer of wealth, but it also extends to intangible concepts such as family values and legacy wishes. Conversations about multigenerational planning begin with the first generation. The success of an estate plan can depend on whether the details of that plan have been properly communicated to family members. Therefore, it is…

Giving Your Child an Allowance

I earned my first allowance of $2 per month by doing weekly chores. As an 8-year-old, my chores included making my bed, emptying my garbage can, dusting and vacuuming my room. My dad would have surprise “military” inspections to check that we were doing our chores properly. When parents consider giving their children an allowance,…

Retirement Plans: Crucial Conversations

Alan Spector and Keith Lawrence wrote Your Retirement Quest based on a decade of research and interviews with more than 200 retirees. For more about Alan and Keith and their book, go to YourRetirementQuest.com. In this article, Alan and Keith discuss the crucial conversations that people should have as they consider retirement.  Have you discussed your retirement…

Bond Funds Aren’t Naturally Riskier Than Individual Bonds

In spending significant time talking to clients and wealth advisors about fixed income, one common misconception is that bond funds are more exposed to interest rate risk than laddered individual bond portfolios. The logic basically starts and ends with the observation that individual bonds can be held to maturity while bond funds don’t necessarily hold…

Positive Developments for Municipal Bond Investors

Public pension underfunding at the state and local level has rightly received an enormous amount of attention over the past few years. Most public pension funds are significantly underfunded when pension liabilities are valued using economically reasonable assumptions. In fact, Moody’s has calculated total underfunding to be roughly $1.8 trillion as of 2011, meaning the…

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