SA For FAs

While emerging markets investors generally flee bad news, and others who remain to scout out opportunities get trampled on the way to the exits, a third approach exists to escape the overall EM trend when it is moving powerfully downward, as it is today. This brief podcast (5:05) argues that economic growth has shifted to emerging markets, but investors no longer need be trampled by clumsy investment products that group emerging markets all together.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The retirement system in the U.S. consists of three pillars, and each is continually getting wobblier, as Roger Salus details in his most recent article on Seeking Alpha. The emerging reality seems to be that retirement is becoming a luxury that decreasing numbers will be able to afford. This brief podcast (5:12) argues that the choice has come down to enjoyment of luxuries in one’s earlier years or later ones, and offers ideas on how to view the household balance sheet and conceptualize “crisis.”Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Should investors finally throw in the towel on global diversification after the S&P 500’s trouncing of everything else for over a decade now? This brief podcast (4:11) argues that if the path to riches were knowable, one would expect the most highly trained economists to be among those who discerned it, yet they’re always wrong. Giving up on asset allocation and putting everything into the S&P 500 strikes me as actually guaranteed to become painfully wrong.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Investing is not some sort of Aristotelian system that one derives from pure reason. This brief podcast (4:27) argues that an advisor can’t make the client’s money work hard for him unless he truly understands how hard the client worked for the money.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Deflation is the dread of the Fed, yet individuals have a clear and easy form of protection, namely, paying down debt. This brief podcast (4:05) argues that, apart from the benefits of cash as a portfolio hedge, there are other rewards for conservative debt management, including surviving a potential new round of deflation.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People have a powerful instinct people to squeeze out every drop of efficiency in their investments, but a little slack, especially before retirement, can be a good thing.This brief podcast (4:19) argues that putting your assets to work means putting them at risk; once you’ve done that adequately, there’s no shame in holding cash.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Corn prices have jumped to a three-year high amid extreme wet weather. USDA data two months ago that suggested there was nothing to worry about today confirm that there was something to worry about. This brief podcast (3:37) argues that the key issue of concern to investors amidst this commodity spike is inflation protection. Owning commodity futures is one way to hedge this risk; those uninterested in fine-tuning their portfolios could rely on cash and gold to get them through the market’s tantrums. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Money’s final print issue discusses real-life Golden Girls who moved in together in retirement. These ladies have applied the same efficiency to their residential lives as a tontine brings to a shared pension, sparing themselves the $8,365 average monthly cost of a nursing home. This brief podcast (4:51) explains why the Golden Girls' method of sharing retirement housing with friends is a winning strategy financially, emotionally and health-wise.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Trump says he expects to conclude a trade agreement with Japan in August, yet he also characterized the bilateral trade imbalance as a “security threat” and as "unbelievably large.” How do we parse these seemingly contradictory signals? This brief podcast (4:41) offers several arguments to remain upbeat about Japan, including the notion that defining the trade imbalance as a security threat is likely to mean giving Japan a pass on military security issues, which would drain the Japanese economy; also, a deal with the U.S. would strengthen Prime Minister Abe in July elections.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A New York Times describes a remarkable new trend, confirmed by Census Bureau data, that non-wealthy Americans are fleeing what are thought to be the country's most appealing urban centers. The article doesn’t discuss retirement, but it would seem that this changed economics of daily life may have parallel implications for retirement planners. Specifically, retirees may have an opportunity to use the changed pattern of costs and benefits to their advantage.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zero Hedge has a story out on the woes of what it calls the world’s most bearish hedge fund, called Horseman Global.The fund’s manager presents an investment thesis of sorts, but I think any investor with merely ordinary sophistication can understand why they should stay clear of this or similar funds. This brief podcast (4:07) argues that history amply demonstrates that markets climb higher. A short fund denies the force of persistence in markets and sets up its investors for disaster.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Commencement speeches tend to emphasize the advantages of grads’ newfound freedom and choices, but neglect to explain how they can access those benefits. This brief podcast (4:44) argues that achieving financial independence provides such a path, and that the discipline and effort required is the sort that really anybody can achieve. We note that Oprah Winfrey framed this well in a commencement address she gave last week.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With a risk-off flight to safety taking place, the market commentariat is trying to help investors sort out their fixed-income options. Should they focus on high yield or high credit quality? Corporate bonds or Treasuries? This brief podcast (4:16) argues that if you’re going to be allocating a portion of your wealth out of safety concerns, find something that is not at risk of big losses. That would include short-term Treasuries or I Bonds.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Society of Actuaries has released a draft of its new mortality tables, reflecting a notable decline in the longevity of male white-collar workers.This brief podcast (5:07) argues that advisory clients are individuals, not statistics. Yet while neither the Centers for Disease Control nor the Society of Actuaries will determine which end date the advisor uses to make retirement income projections, the statistics do capture a certain demographic reality we should all take into consideration.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Washington is likely soon to see rare bipartisan cooperation reforming the retirement system, proof that people can behave wisely once they have exhausted the alternatives. But while U.S. reforms would improve access for large numbers of Americans outside the framework of standard workplace benefits, proposals in Canada’s 2019 budget could enhance retirees’ incomes. Specifically, the budget proposes two significant innovations for Canadian defined contribution plans: a deferred annuity option and a tontine-style risk pool.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dan Silverman, professor of economics at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, is an authority on financial decision making; retirement healthcare; and annuitization. In this interview, Professor Silverman offers three reasons why two similarly situated people would have different financial outcomes. He offers a solution to the classic retirement-saving puzzle – the surprising phenomenon that retirees strongly avoid drawing down their wealth beyond what researchers would expect. His answer to this question also helps to resolve the so-called “annuity puzzle,” wherein consumers shun products that economic theory assumes they would embrace.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Investors need to keep an eye on the oil market, which has the potential to be even more disruptive than the U.S.-China trade dispute. The 20-month high in oil inventories should be bearish for oil, but prices are rising because the market weighs tension between the U.S. and Iran more than the current glut. While short-term investors should be eyeing Brent crude oil futures, in the long-term, a Middle East conflict could ratchet up the price consumers pay at the pump and damage the global economy.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You have heard about non-voluntary retirement, but is it something you have made provision for? According to a study of wide scope by ProPublica and The Urban Institute, it appears that somewhere close to 56% of Americans experience this unanticipated job loss after age 50. This means that years assumed to be peak-earning years could end up as years of substantially reduced earnings. Nevertheless, foreknowledge of this trend can help us safeguard our incomes and plan for contingencies.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’re a successful investor, it’s less because of the great stocks you bought than from the patience you learned from your mother. Knowing that our mothers want our success as much as we want it for ourselves can fortify investors with persistence. And it is fit that we acknowledge that our mothers endowed us with an investment whose returns flow in perpetuity.This brief podcast concludes with a suggestion for a meaningful Mother’s Day gift.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is the president’s surprise announcement of massively higher duties on Chinese imports the start of a prolonged new trade war or a mere Trumpian negotiating tactic? If it is the latter, crashing stock markets are likely to rocket upward following the signing of a trade accord.This brief podcast suggests five reasons why Sunday’s tweet is likely to be just an extreme tactic, though the risk remains that one or both sides miscalculate how to quickly patch relations.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices