Tag: Markets

Negative Interest Rates – Searching for Meaning

We have mentioned negative interest rates in the past.  Let’s take a look at what it means to you.

Central banks lower interest rates to encourage economic activity.  The theory is that low interest rates allow companies to borrow money at lower costs, encouraging them to expand, invest in and grow their business.  It also encourages consumers to borrow money for things like new homes, cars, furniture and all the other things for which people borrow money.

It’s the reason the Federal Reserve has lowered rates to practically zero and kept them there for years.  It’s also why the Fed has not raised rates; they’re afraid that doing so will reduce the current slow rate of growth even more.

But if low rates are good for the economy, would negative interest rates be even better?  Some governments seem to think so.

Negative interest rates in Japan mean that if you buy a Japanese government bond due in 10 years you will lose 0.275% per year.  If you buy a 10 year German government bond today  your interest rate is negative 0.16%.   Why would you lend your money to someone if they guaranteed you that you would get less than the full amount back?  Good question.  Perhaps the answer is that you have little choice or are even more afraid of the alternative.

Per the Wall Street Journal:

There is now $13 trillion of global negative-yielding debt, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. That compares with $11 trillion before the
Brexit vote, and barely none with a negative yield in mid-2014.
In Switzerland, government bonds through the longest maturity, a bond due in nearly half a century, are now yielding below zero. Nearly 80% of Japanese and German government bonds have negative yields, according to Citigroup.

This leaves investors are searching the world for securities that have a positive yield.  That includes stocks that pay dividends and bonds like U.S. Treasuries that still have a positive yield: currently 1.4% for ten years.  However, the search for yield also leads investors to more risky investments like emerging market debt and junk bonds.  The effect is that all of these alternatives are being bid up in price, which has the effect of reducing their yield.

The yield on Lithuania’s 10-year government debt has more than halved this year to around 0.5%, according to Tradeweb. The yield on Taiwan’s 10-year bonds has fallen to about 0.7% from about 1% this year, according to Thomson Reuters.
Elsewhere in the developed world, New Zealand’s 10-year-bond yields have fallen to about 2.3% from 3.6% as investors cast their nets across the globe.
Rashique Rahman, head of emerging markets at Invesco, said his firm has been getting consistent inflows from institutional clients in Western Europe and Asia interested in buying investment-grade emerging-market debt to “mimic the yield they used to get” from their home markets.
Clients don’t care if it is Mexico or Poland or South Korea, he said, “they just want a higher yield.” ….
Ricky Liu, a high-yield-bond portfolio manager at HSBC Global Asset Management, said his firm has clients from Asia who are willing for the first time to invest in portfolios that include the highest-rated junk bonds.

How and where this will end is anybody’s guess.  In our view, negative interest rates are an indication that central bankers are wandering into uncharted territory.  We’re not convinced that they really know how things will turn out.  We remain cautiously optimistic about the U.S. economy and are staying the course, but we are not chasing yield.

How a stock market slump affects retirees

Because retirees are no longer earning income, they view a decline in their investments with more concern than those who are still working.

Many savers in retirement also focus on a number that represents the peak value of their portfolio and view any decline from that value with concern.

Psychologists refer to this as the “anchoring effect.”

The unfortunate result of this is that it causes them to worry, leading to bad decisions. This includes selling some – or all – of their stock portfolio and raising cash. This makes it more difficult for their portfolios to regain its previous values, especially when the return on cash-equivalents like money market funds and CDs are at historic lows.

The answer to this dilemma is to create a well-balanced investment portfolio that can take advantage of growing markets and cushions the blow of declining markets.

This is often where an experienced financial advisor (RIA) can help. One who can create diversified portfolios and who can encourage the investor to stick with the plan in both up and down markets.

[contact-form subject='[Korving {030251e622a83165372097b752b1e1477acc3e16319689a4bdeb1497eb0fac93}26amp; Company Blog’][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]

4 Reasons Why You Need a Good Financial Advisor Now

A good financial advisor has a number of roles: planner, investment manager, educator who is willing to teach you about investing, and sounding board with whom you can share your fears and aspirations.

Why is a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA), a fiduciary who puts your interests ahead of his own, so important now? People often get over-confident during a Bull Market. It’s when the market gets scary that financial professionals really prove their worth.

We have all heard the old sayings about being diversified, buy low and sell high, and stay the course. That’s often harder to do than it looks, especially in trying times such as these, when investor psychology overtakes reason. A financial advisor’s job sometimes involves protecting investors from themselves. And to protect them from all the bad advice that’s out there and from the bad actors in the industry.

  1. The first thing that a fiduciary does is tell their clients that despite what you hear, no one can time the market. There may be some people who are exceptionally good at stock picking, but those rare individuals are not giving away their advice to you on TV, in Money Magazine, or in newsletters; I don’t care what they claim. If they exist at all, they are managing their own portfolios on an island in the Caribbean.
  2. The retail financial services industry has an incentive to sell you expensive products as often as possible. And they are very good at it. Don’t get caught in the frequent trading trap; it’s not to your benefit. A fee-only RIA does not have an incentive to sell you investments to earn a commission.
  3. Investors typically allow their portfolios to get too risky during the good times. When the stock market is going up, it’s too easy to get caught up in the excitement and ignore asset allocation guidelines. A good investment manager will rebalance your portfolio regularly to keep you from running into a Bear Market with a portfolio overloaded with risky stocks.
  4. A fee-only RIA works for you. Stockbrokers, insurance agents, even mutual fund managers, work for the companies that pay them. They are legally required to work in the best interest of their employers, not their clients. Some of them do try to work in their clients’ best interests, but there can be large financial incentives to do otherwise. A fee-only RIA works only for you. We act in your best interest and use our expertise to allow you to take advantage of opportunities in good markets and weather the bad ones.

During volatile markets, we focus on the important things that really matter, not the daily chatter. We keep open lines of communication with our clients, helping them make sense of what’s going on, providing perspective, and helping them distinguish between what’s just noise and what’s a genuine trend. We work hard to control risk and manage portfolios to help our clients maintain confidence in their financial future.

If you want to receive our weekly commentary, view our latest guides, or get a free download of the first three chapters of our book “Before I Go”, or just find out about us, visit us at www.korvingco.com.

Setting Realistic Financial Goals

How realistic are your goals?  Some people work hard and exceeded the goals they had when they were young.  Others find their goals forever out of reach.  For example, most people want to retire in their mid-sixties.  That’s a goal, but is it realistic?  Are they going to have a pension when they retire and, if so, how much is it?  When are they going to apply for Social Security, and how much are they going to get?  Will they need a retirement nest egg, and how much will be in it?

Career choices will have a big impact on these answers.  A financial plan will also provide many of these answers.  But a plan is only as good as the assumptions we put into it.  As the old saying goes: “Garbage in, garbage out.”

The rate of return you get on the money you put aside has a huge impact on whether you reach your goals.  Studies have shown that many people have an unrealistic expectation of the returns they can expect on their savings and investments.  With interest rates near zero percent, putting your money in the bank is actually a losing proposition after taxes and inflation.  Investing in the stock and bond markets may lead to higher returns.  But the long-term returns that many people assume they can get often leads to taking unreasonable risks.

There is nothing wrong with having high goals.  The best way to check to see if your goals are high, but attainable, is to talk to a fee only financial advisor.  Preferably one that is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™.  They have the experience and the expertise to let you know if your goals are reasonable and what you can do to reach them.

Contact us for a “reality check” today.

8 Common Reasons for Retirement Failure

1. Overspending.

-You won’t spend less in retirement.  The old saw that retirees only spend 80% of their pre-retirement income is a myth.

2. Elder Fraud.

-Seniors are becoming the favored victims of swindlers.

3. Health care.

-As we age the cost of medical care goes up.  Medicare is covering less and premiums are going up.

4. Starting a business.

-Investing capital in a business that fails can devastate retirement finances.

5. Adult children.

-Helping your children through a “rough patch” can become is one of the most common ways of ending up broke.

6. Second homes.

-The cost of maintaining that vacation home when you’re no longer working can drain your resources when your income drops.

7. Divorce.

-Couples sometimes wait until the children leave home to divorce.  When assets are split 50/50, retirement becomes a problem for both parties.

8. Investment mistakes.

-Making poor investment choices is one of the most common ways of ruining your retirement lifestyle.

If you are nearing retirement, don’t enter into it without a plan.

Successful and investing and emotional control

One of the big benefits of professional money management is “emotional control.”

Emotional control is the ability to control one’s emotions in times of stress. Napoleon once said that “The greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes.” There is a similarity between war and successful investing. Both require the ability to keep a cool head at times of high stress.

There is another old saying in the investment world: “Don’t confuse brains with a Bull Market.” When the market is going up, it’s easy to assume that you are making smart investment decisions. But your decisions may have nothing to do with your success; you may simply by riding the crest of a wave.

That’s when people become overconfident.

When the market stops going up, or the next Bear Market begins, the amateur investor allows fear to dominate his thinking. The typical investor tend to sell as the stock market reached its bottom. In fact, following the market bottom in early 2009, even as the stock market began to recover, investors continued to sell stock funds.  Since then the market has doubled.

Professional investors are not immune to emotion, but the good ones have developed investment models that allow them to ride through Bear Markets with moderate losses and ride the rebound up as the market recovers. It is that discipline that allows them to make fewer mistakes and, like Napoleon’s general, come out ahead.

The lure and risks of “alternative investments.”

The financial world has been deluged marketing offers from investment firms offering “alternative investments.” “Alts” are non-traditional investments.  They include non-traded REITs, hedge funds and private equity.

The lure of “alts” is summarized in a quote from Financial IQ:

“The 2008 financial crisis scarred investors enough that they’re still seeking new ways to diversify out of stocks and bonds. Meanwhile, investors also are hungry for yield amid persistently low interest rates.”

The problem with “alts” is that they are not well understood.

Many are not liquid – in other words they cannot be sold at a moment’s notice.

In addition, most are not transparent – you can’t always tell what you own because the “alts” managers are secretive, unwilling to reveal their strategy in detail.

Third, the fees charged by “alts” managers are often much higher than those charged by traditional managers.

Many of the “alts” use derivatives which are difficult to understand and can lead to risks that are not obvious. An example are the “guaranteed” structured notes created prior to 2008. When Lehman Brothers collapsed it was revealed that the “guaranteed” notes issued by Lehman were backed by the claims paying ability of a bankrupt company.  People lost millions and learned a painful lesson.

Our philosophy is to invest our money in securities we understand. We always want to know: what’s the worst thing that can happen? If we don’t understand the risk, we don’t invest.  It’s a lesson learned over the years as we keep in mind the first rule of making money:  don’t lose it.

Financial tips for corporate executives

The December 2014 issue of Financial Planning magazine had an article about “Strategies for Wealthy Execs.” It begins:

Just because your clients are successful executives doesn’t mean they understand their own finances.

And that’s true. Successful executives are good at running businesses or giant corporations. But that does not make them experts in personal finance.

One of the ways executives are compensated is with stock options. But options must be exercised or they will expire. Yet 11% of in-the-money stock options are allowed to expire each year. That’s usually because they don’t pay attention to their stock option statements.

Executives usually end up with concentrated positions in their company’s stock. Prudence requires that everyone, especially including corporate executives, have to be properly diversified. Their shares may be restricted and can only be sold under the SEC’s Rule 144. To prevent charges of insider trading, many executives sell their company stock under Rule 10b5-1.

An additional consideration for executives is charitable giving. Higher income and capital gains tax rates make it beneficial for richer executives to set up donor-advised funds, charitable lead trusts, charitable remainder trusts, or family foundations.

For more information on these strategies, consult a knowledgeable financial planner.

Family Business Financial Planning

A family business is one of the ways that individuals build something of value for themselves and their family. Suffolk is a great example of a community where family owned restaurants, hardware stores, gift shops, bike shops, jewelry, sporting goods, clothing and furniture stores line the streets. Suffolk has its national chains, but its most recognizable businesses – in the pork and peanut industry – began as family businesses.

These family shops often provide a comfortable living as well as job opportunities for family members of the founders. Whether they stay small and local or grow into large businesses, there are challenges that everyone running a business has to face.

The first is competition. For every business there is a better financed competitor. The supermarket doomed the family-run grocery store. Wal Mart is a feared competitor for anyone selling groceries, clothing, furniture, electronics, toys, eyeglasses; and now it’s even getting into banking.

The second challenge is a bad economy. Many communities have seen their downtowns shuttered when local industry left. The businesses depending on housing have still not fully recovered from the crash of 2008.

Finally, most small businesses are very dependent on one or a few key people. If the children don’t want to get into the business when the parents are ready to retire, the business often closes. There is no guarantee that a business can be sold when they owner is ready to retire. Unless the owner has prepared for this, the financial results can be devastating.

For all these reasons, the family business owner has to make sure that they have prepared themselves financially for life after the business. Succession planning is critically important and should be part of the business plan from the moment the business is started. If a business is a partnership, buy-sell agreements should be in place to avoid complications from the death of a partner. If a business is going to be passed along to children, the owners should be clear about the division of assets. Otherwise there is likely to be wrangling – or even lawsuits – over who is entitled to what.

Most people in business choose to convert from individual proprietorships to limited liability companies. This protects the business owners’ personal assets in case of a lawsuit against the business. Some convert to “Chapter C” corporations for tax purposes. If a company wants to grow even larger, it may want to raise cash by “going public” and selling shares to the general public.

One of the most common mistakes that business owners make is to invest too much of their money in the business. It’s a fact that a family business is a high-risk enterprise. Competition, the economy – even a change in traffic patterns – can bring a business to its knees. Building an investment portfolio should go hand-in-hand with building a business. When most of your money is tied up in your business you are making the same mistake as the investor who owns only one stock. Diversification reduces risk and provides a safety net. Factors that are out of your control could end up severely damaging your business value, thereby crippling your total savings and your future goals and ambitions.

In addition to the traditional savings and investment accounts, the tax code provides many ways for business owners to put money aside in a variety of tax-deferred accounts such as SEP-IRAs, 401(k) plans, and SIMPLE-IRA plans. As a business owner you can even set up a “Defined Benefit Plan” which works much like a traditional pension.

There are a great many things that running a business entails beyond offering customers a great product or service. People who start a business are usually focused on this aspect of the business. But to insure that the business – and the family – survives and thrives, business owners should seek the assistance and guidance of a team consisting of an attorney, an accountant and a financial planner. They may be in the background, but they are critical for the financial success of the family business.

Benchmarking Inverts the Basics of Investing

The problem with “benchmarking”  – that is measuring your investment performance against market indexes (known as “benchmarks”) – is that it often leads to buying into asset bubbles.

During the tech boom of the last 20th century, billions of dollars went into internet stocks whose values became wildly inflated.  People who participated in this as a way of reaching for high rates of return, found that no one rang a bell when the party was over.  Many lost their retirement savings and saw their 401(k)s devastated.

Certain stocks become wildly popular, industries become wildly popular and investing styles become wildly popular, all of which leads to wildly inflated values.  This almost inevitably leads to financial pain.

But this does not only happen in the stock market.  In the first decade of the 21st century, real estate seemed to be a way of making outsized profits.  Of course, when the housing bubble collapsed, many not only lost money, but their homes.

The focus of serious investors is to align your portfolio with your personal objectives.  The focus should be on long-term – multi-year – performance.  The only benchmark that should concern you is the one you set for yourself.

At Korving & Company we keep our clients grounded and work with them to meet their personal benchmarks.  Contact us to do the same for you.

How To Invest Like Bill Gates

Bill Gates’ fortune has ballooned to $82 billion according to the Wall Street Journal. It puts him at the top of the Forbes 500 list of the world’s richest people. And it’s not due to the price of Microsoft stock.

Over the years, Bill Gates has done what any savvy investor does, he’s diversified. He has sold about $40 billion of his Microsoft shares and has given $30 billion to charity. So what’s he done to get even richer? He has hired a money manager. The man’s name is Michael Larson and Gates has given him his “complete trust and faith.”

Gates gave a party in Larson’s honor, toasting him by saying that “Melinda [Gates wife] and I are free to pursue our vision of a healthier and better-educated world because of what Michael has done.”

The way Bill Gates has managed his fortune is a lesson for every investor. There are three distinct things that are worth noting.

1. Diversification. The first rule of risk control – making sure you don’t lose your money –  is diversification. This issue has been beaten to death, yet we still see people with portfolios which are concentrated in one or two stocks. This is often the case of an employee who has bought his company’s stock over many years. Small business owners are even guiltier. Often their single biggest asset is their business. It’s even more important for the owner of a chain of dry cleaners, fast food outlets or a real estate developer to build an investment portfolio that will be there if their business declines. Only about 15% of Gates’ fortune is invested in Microsoft stock. If Microsoft were to close up shop tomorrow, Gates lifestyle would not be affected. He would still be immensely wealthy. Many business owners can’t say the same thing.

2. Hire an investment professional to manage your money. Gates knows computers and computer software. He’s smart, savvy and knows that he lacks investment expertise. Gates hired Larson in 1994, realizing that if he was going to diversify he had to hire someone who was an expert investor to manage his money. The Gates fortune grew from $5 billion when he hired Larson to $82 billion today. Larson has autonomy to buy and sell investments as he sees fit. His portfolio includes stocks, bonds and real estate. He has a staff of about 100 people to help him do the hard work of managing the Gates fortune.

3. Focus on what you enjoy and do best. Because they have someone they can trust managing their money, Gates and his wife can pursue their vision. Most people’s interests revolve around their family, their work or hobbies. Managing the family investments is a distraction from what people want to do. Besides, few people are investment professionals. That’s why Gates example is worth following. Unless you have Gates’ wealth you can’t afford your own dedicated, private, investment manager. But there are investment managers – like Larson – who manage the assets of multiple families.  They can take care of your investments while you focus on the things that are important to you.

Gates gets an update on his investments every two months. Not every investment has been successful, but they are good enough to have returned Gates to the top of the wealth list.

If you are still managing your own money, or have an account with a broker who calls you with investment ideas from time to time, isn’t it time to think about the way the richest man in the world handles his money? Call Korving & Company and let us show you what we can do for you.

Market Myth #2: It’s all about beating the market.

For many amateur investors the object is to beat the market.  They are abetted in this belief by the many magazines and newsletters that make the market the benchmark of what a successful investor should emulate.  People spend hours scouring the media looking for stock tips and investing ideas as if investing was a sport, like horse race, where the object is to beat the others to the finish line.

The fact is that “beating the market” does not address any individual’s actual financial goals.  It’s a meaningless statistic.  And it’s dangerous.

The fact is that most professional investors don’t beat the market on a consistent basis.  Even index funds, designed to replicate the market, don’t actually beat the market.  At best they provide market rates of return minus a fee.  Attempting to beat the market exposes the investor to more risk than is prudent.

Your portfolio should be built around your needs and consistent with your risk tolerance.

What does this mean?  Your portfolio should provide a return that’s keeping you ahead of the cost of living, that allows you to retire in comfort, and is conservative enough that you will not be scared out of the market during the inevitable corrections.

Want to create a portfolio that’s right for you?  Contact us.

  • 1
  • 2
Marketing and Design by Array Digital

©  Korving & Company, LLC