In Today’s Market, What’s a Baby Boomer To Do?

In Today’s Market, What’s a Baby Boomer To Do?

The year 2011 brought the first wave of Baby Boomers turning 65. Every single day in America there are 10,000 people turning 65 and this will continue on for the next 18 years. Let’s review what a typical 65-year-old Baby Boomer has experienced the past decade or so. In the late nineties, a typical Baby…
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The Shaking of the Rattlesnake’s Tail?

For years, analysts have been predicting the collapse of the 30 year bond rally. Since 1982, bond prices have generally been rising at a rate without near-term historical precedent. In early 2009, it was widely thought that it was the end of the bond price rally as Treasury rates were pushed to historical lows (yields…
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The Erasing of a Financial Crisis

To many, the mark of the beginning of the financial crisis was on March 16, 2008 when Bear Stearns was sold to Chase at a fire-sale price. The Dow Jones closed that day at 11,951.09 and continued to charge downward for the next year. As I write this, the Dow Jones is at 12,821.25. I…
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Will the True Victims Please Step Forward

Logic and good thinking is a hobby of mine. Conversely, dishonesty, misleading facts and poor thinking are very irritating to me which is why I probably I don’t like most news reporting. I feel like a good value I bring is to help people see wrong assumptions and myths in the world around us, particularly…
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Ouch … Hath the Bondocalypse Descended upon Us?

Regular readers of my blog will know that I often riff on the 10 year Treasury rates and how I feel that it spells out a “Safety Bubble”. Many investors have fled there for safety, perhaps under estimating the ugliness of price risk. If you buy a low yield bond and immediately afterward bond yields…
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The Three Killers of Misunderstanding Investing

An annual delight of mine is reading Warren Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders. Buffett has very much influenced me as a financial advisor and how I manage investments. In this year’s letter he writes, “Investing is often described as the process of laying out money now in the expectation of receiving more money in the…
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A Second Opinion

Very recently I had a conversation with somebody that went something like this: ME: Tell me about the other advisors in your life. THEM: I have a tax advisor, an attorney set up a trust for us and another financial advisor at XYZ Firm [the name has been changed to protect the innocent]. ME: Ah…
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Longevity Risk

I see financial advising as a mix of many skills. Sometimes it’s that of investor psychologist, but in the nuts and bolts of it I’m a risk manager. A topic I give a lot of thought is, “How long will my clients live?” My biggest goal for my clients is that they never run out…
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2001-2011: The Golden Years of Investing

I’m being tongue in cheek, but speaking literally of gold and all the gold hype. Before 2000 for about twenty years gold was hardly spoken of in the media as an investment of any interest. Let’s look at some history: From the period of 1934-1971 gold was set at a fixed rate of $35.00 =…
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