Insights

Second Quarter 2018 | In considering claiming strategies for Social Security, one can consider many factors, including other resources, age, age of spouse, level of benefit, spouses own benefits, health, estate desires, tax effects, effects on Medicare Premiums, etc. One of the most common processes is to try to predict one's life span in order to maximize the total benefit over that interval. This method boils down to the following general rule: If you live long, it pays to wait; if you live short, it pays to not wait. Problem is, we don't know, for the most part, whether we will live long or short. Also, other considerations may outweigh simple maximization.

First Quarter 2018 | We've been publishing some pieces on behavioral finance and cognitive biases in recent weeks. This is a look at a laundry list of known biases and priors that affect the financial decisions that individuals make. This is an area of inquiry that has become more prominent in recent years. A recent book, The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis tells the story of two of the pioneers in this research. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two Israeli psychologists, who started some 40-odd years ago to identify, evaluate, and document behavioral biases that show up in decision-making. Their work was the inception of Behavioral Finance. Another source in this area is Kahneman’s own book Thinking Fast and Slow. In his book, Kahneman describes much of research that forms the basis of his life’s work. Most interesting, I think, is the tour of the two decision-making systems we all operate with as a part of our original equipment.

Fourth Quarter 2017 | Tax reform is now real and as we expected in early November, the changes are fairly consequential.

Third Quarter 2017 | The breach of the Equifax credit reporting database that occurred several months ago exposed the personal information of almost half of the US population. This event has raised the risk level on personal privacy; exposure of personally identifiable information and identity theft. While it may seem that much personal information is already exposed in a number of ways, and that efforts to minimize exposure may be futile, we believe strongly that it is prudent to take all reasonable measures to maintain information security.

Second Quarter 2017 | The Department Of Labor (DOL) Fiduciary rule, which has been addressed here previously has gone into effect, but the ultimate future of the rule remains mired in the political crosswinds. Whether the rule is retained or not is only of minor consequence at this point. The rule is deeply flawed in that it only addresses certain "accounts" and doesn't address other "accounts". Most consumers have no clue as to the subtleties of how the rule may or may not apply. The rule does not really clarify the underlying relationship between client and advisor.

First Quarter 2017 | Throughout the life of this firm, we have as a part of our investment policy discussions, cautioned our clients about the futility of attempting to time the market. There are a number of compelling arguments against the idea of market timing including: the lack of evidence that anyone can do it consistently and regularly, the need to make two decisions in a row correctly (when to buy/sell and when to sell/buy), increased tax drag and trading costs, and the fact that being out of the market on the good days will be devastating to long term returns. There are many more, but we tend to emphasize this last one since it is objective and verifiable and gets to the heart of the matter.