Tag: stock market

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.

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.

Finding financial guidance for the middle aged executive

Let’s imagine that you’re now firmly on your career track. You’re an expert in your field and have a team of experts to manage some of the complexities of life outside of work.

  • You doctor gives you regular medical check-ups.
  • Your attorney to reviews your estate plans regularly.
  • Your CPA prepares your taxes and suggests ways to reduce them.
  • But there’s something missing ….

You are putting away some serious money and you are getting nervous about market risk so you want to find a good financial advisor. You don’t want a broker who will call you to sell stocks and bonds on commission. You want someone who will create a plan and give you unbiased financial advice. Someone who will manage your portfolio for you – commission free – so that your retirement plans won’t blow up just as you get ready to enjoy independence.

But there’s a dilemma. Just as you feel more comfortable knowing that the pilot on your next flight has spent thousands of hours flying your plane, you want to find a seasoned financial pro who has experience in all kinds of markets. But those years of experience could well mean that he’ll retire before you do! What’s the solution?

Recognizing that continuity is important in a relationship as personal as financial guidance, many advisors have set up teams.

Korving & Company is a good example. Arie Korving has nearly 30 years of experience as a financial advisor. A Certified Financial Planner, he is the author of numerous articles and books on finance and estate planning, he has experience that includes both Bull and Bear markets. He’s seen the investment world from both sides and knows that honesty and experience is what people want in their advisor.

Stephen Korving received his degree in finance from Virginia Tech with a focus on risk management. After graduation he joined Cambridge Associates, one of the country’s leading investment management consulting firms. Cambridge provides guidance to major institutions and the super-rich. A Certified Financial Planner, he teamed up with Arie ten years ago and in 2010 they founded Korving & Company, a boutique RIA (Registered Investment Advisor) focused on providing holistic financial guidance to executives and retirees.

Together they provide decades of experience and a plan to continue to do so for decades into the future.  Check them out.

With Interest Rates As Low As They Are, How Do You Get Income ?

I was reminded recently how low interest rates were when I downloaded my investment account activity into Quicken. Each account with a money market balance received a few pennies worth of interest, not enough to buy a cup of coffee. Certainly not enough to buy a Happy Meal. The average money market fund yields 0.02%. Every $1,000 investment will give you 20 cents in a year. And that’s before taxes. You could make more money collecting bottles at the side of the road.

There are some alternatives. One way is to invest for growth and forget about income. You can always spend some of the growth when you need the money.

But for those who want to see income flowing into their accounts, there’s always the “Dogs of the Dow.” The “Dogs” are members of the 30 Dow Jones industrial average with the highest dividend yields. This may be the result of a drop in prices, hence the name. For example, two of the highest yielding stocks in the DJIA are oil stocks which have declined in price even as they increased their dividends.

The current yield on the “Dogs” portfolio is over 3.5% and last year the total return (dividends plus capital appreciation) was over 10%. For more information on this strategy, contact us.

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.

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.

What is the purpose of a stock market?

Before there was a stock market, there were stock companies.

A stock company allows individuals to pool their money to create an organization to operate and grow.  Stock is used to determine how much a person owns of a company.  Owning a stock does not necessarily create wealth.  Wealth creation can only occur if the stock can be sold to someone else who is willing to pay you more for it than what you originally paid.  This led to the creation of a market for people who owned shares in stock companies.

A stock market has two functions.  First, it allows the owners of stock to sell their ownership interest easily and quickly.  Second, it also allows people who would like to be owners to buy an ownership interest quickly and easily.  Now even people who do not have substantial financial resources can participate in the growth in value of large enterprises.

For example, the founders of Apple were able to raise money for their company by selling their shares of Apple stock to people who were willing to bet that the company would be successful.  That was 1976.  In 1980 the shares of Apple were first allowed to be publicly traded.  As a result, the founding shareholders were able to profit from their original investment and the company itself raised millions of dollars that it could invest in growth.  It also allowed people who did not personally know the founders to become partial owners and benefit from the company’s growth.  The stock market allowed people who believed in Apple computers to bet on the company’s future, and also provided them with a ready market for their shares if they needed to sell or decided they no longer believed in the company’s future.

The bottom line is that the stock market creates liquidity.  Without liquidity it becomes much harder for a company to raise the capital it needs to grow in a modern economy.

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