As we were watching former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan the other day being interviewed about the current state of the economy, he was pessimistic about the economic outlook here and across the globe. That’s not terribly unusual. By his own admission, Alan Greenspan hasn’t been optimistic about the economy in a while. However, there was one item that we did agree with Greenspan on, which is his opinion of negative interest rates. While he didn’t view negative interest rates…
By Nick Economos Whenever you’ve heard about insurance as an investment option, there’s an excellent chance that you’ve heard pitches rather than plans. The truth is, insurance could be a perfectly fine option to consider, but it’s challenging to know when you’re bombarded with promises like: “It’s got a dividend of 6%!” Not to mention you can get lobbed easy questions like, “How do you feel about risk?” and “How do you feel about taxes?” With your eye on retirement in…
By Nick Economos Something about that Blue Chip stock just seems to be safer to you. After all, it’s a household brand name. It’s listed on that exclusive list of only 30 companies, the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Its earnings appear stable and without much risk. So what could go wrong? It’s an easy assumption to make – and that’s where we’ve seen investors get into trouble. They believe stability yesterday means stability in the future based on the simple…
If you consume any kind of financial media, you can’t help but notice a recurring theme: Negativity. Why all the doom and gloom? Our theory is that there’s actually an incentive to scare from the media because it makes for a compelling story that sells. Firms that create financial products stand to benefit from fear too. What’s that? You’re an investor craving greater stability? They’ve got a product for that. Yes, fear sells. However, just because someone is telling you…
By Nicholas Economos, CRPS® The editorial mission of the Fiduciary Advisor blog, and all of our FFP University publications, is to help investors translate the latest market news from a fiduciary perspective — putting their needs first on an active basis. Our quarterly market review webinars are a big part of that. We know that many of our clients don't have time to view the recent Q3 Market Review webinar, so I’ll summarize the key points here. And we’ll try to do this…
By Nicholas Economos, CRPS® In our inaugural blog post for The Fiduciary Advisor, we discussed how the risks of the American retirement crisis call for fiduciary advice — financial guidance that puts investor needs first by law. In this post, we’ll explore investment risk in more detail. Investment risk can be thought of as simply the risk that an investment’s actual return will be different than expected. As investment decisions have largely shifted from professional pension managers to individuals,…
