“The flow of money into ETFs doesn’t represent some mad rush to a specific asset class or sector; it’s simply a change in formats to…
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Exchange Traded Funds Are (Mostly) Good
How Advisors Saddle Clients with Massive Tax Bills
My favorite quote on taxes comes from Morgan Stanley… “You must pay taxes, but there’s no law that says you have to leave a tip.” Recently, we met a prospective client that was baffled how her advisor generated a large...
read moreWhat is Evidence-Based Investing?
“As Upton Sinclair said, it’s difficult to persuade even the most intelligent people to accept the evidence if they’re financially incentivized to ignore it.”– Robin…
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Hard Ball Questions to Ask Your Advisor
A Google search for “Questions to Ask Your Financial Advisor” will yield an abundance of articles ranging from exhaustive to utter nonsense. The below list…
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Don’t Underperform Yourself
Prolonged bull markets can lead to false confidence for do-it-yourself investors, financial advisors, and professional institutional money managers. After all, everyone looks like a genius…
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Pure Q1 Recap in Pics (and a few words)
We are trying something new to convey our view of the world to our readers. We have heard feedback from investors that industry market commentary…
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Advantages of Working with Independent Firms
The perception exists that investing money with large, established firms is the conservative route. The explosive growth of the independent Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) tells…
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Mismanaged Bond Portfolios Are Costly
Fixed income investing used to be much easier. An investor could clip 5% return in their sleep without taking much risk. For example, from 1987…
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Does Dollar Cost Averaging Work?
There are two types of Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA). Automatically saving in your employer’s 401(k) is the good version. The investor is systemically purchasing shares…
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What Are You Paying for Wealth Management?
Time and again I speak with investors who have no clue what their advisor is charging them. CFA Institute published a report (February 2016) “From…
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