Good to Know

Good to Know Unmanaged concentrated position risk can be a ticking time bomb in your client’s portfolio. For example, one of the nation’s oldest (founded in 1879) and most respected banks was trading at $38/share in 2007. It had a long-term, loyal stockholder following, many of whom with holdings — accumulated over generations — valued…

Good to Know Loss aversion, taken to its extreme, can wreck long-term retirement planning and investment success. We’ll unpack what drives “irrational” loss aversion, identify a dangerous decision error, and illustrate a potential guardrail to remain on track with our long-term investing plans. “Irrational” Loss Aversion We’re a logical, evolved species, right? Before you answer,…

Good to Know Imagine an individual investor passionate about a specific stock (it happens more often than you might think). Assume the investor’s portfolio is worth $2 million, but $1 million is in just one stock. How could that $1,000,000 concentration hemorrhage into only $12,000 in just over one year? Sadly, that’s precisely what happened…

Good to Know Purpose The goal of a swap fund is to reduce concentration of wealth risk through a unique approach to diversification. We will review this intriguing strategy’s operation, legal structure, tax implications, pros, and cons. Operation A swap fund (after this referred to as “the fund”) is a pool of concentrated positions in…

Good to Know Forewarned is forearmed when studying for the CFP Board exam or choosing a CFP® Certification program. In its latest release of public discipline, CFP Board telegraphs its continued priority for enforcing ethical conduct. Recent disciplinary actions include public censures, suspensions, and revocations. Public Censures Public censures were issued for: Selling securities without…

Good to Know The question posed in this article’s title can be answered by applying the timeless wisdom of a Chinese general who died over 2,500 years ago. “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” -Sun Szu, 544-496 BC While the CFP Board exam…

Good to Know This is the final article of our four-article series on investment risk for the CFP Board exam. Here’s a reminder of the risk concepts we’ve covered so far in the series: Part I: When to trust the “mean” return, Part II: Using standard deviation to manage investment risk, and Part III: Skewness—Do…

Good to Know Question: Why should financial planners and advisors care about skewness? Answer: A negative skew can obscure excess downside risk in a portfolio. We discussed the mean (geometric average) return and standard deviation in our first two blogs. Now we’ll use those concepts to illustrate skewness in this, the third installment in our…

Good to Know This blog is the second in a four-part series that includes: Part I: When to trust the “mean” return, Part II: Using standard deviation to manage investment risk, Part III: Skewness—Do we want negative or positive skew in our portfolio?, and Part IV: Kurtosis of a return distribution—Is more kurtosis a good…

Good to Know This blog is the first in a four-part series that includes: When to trust the “mean” return, Using standard deviation to forecast outcomes, Skewness—Do we want negative or positive skew in our portfolio? Kurtosis of a return distribution—Is more kurtosis a good thing? We will begin with the average or mean return.…