Rebalancing Frequency for your Portfolio

How Often Should I Rebalance My Portfolio?

The market is going to drag your portfolio through every mud puddle it finds. It’s your job to pick your portfolio up, dust it off, and point it back in the right direction. Rebalancing brings your portfolio back into line, and ensures that you are taking the right amount of risk through time.

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How Long is the Long Term?

Everyone always talks about investing (and planning) for the long term. But they’re usually vague about what the “long term” actually means. Does that mean 5 years? 10 years? More? (Spoiler: the answer is definitely more). And frankly, talking about how you…

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Occam’s – How Buffer Assets Might Be Able to Help Your Retirement 

WHAT IS OCCAM’S RAZOR? Occam’s Razor is a principle attributed to William Occam, a 14th century philosopher. He stressed that explanations must not be multiplied beyond what is necessary. Thus, Occam’s Razor is a term used to “shave off” or dismiss superfluous explanations for…

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Determining Sustainable Spending from an Investment Portfolio in Retirement

Determining the sustainable spending rate from a diversified investment portfolio in retirement requires making decisions about longevity and market returns. The final section in this chapter provides an opportunity to integrate this discussion in order to obtain a better sense about sustainable…

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GME and WallStreetBets

What Does the GameStop Kerfuffle Mean?

It’s been a pretty wild ride with GameStop. But while there has been a lot happening, does it actually mean much? We’ve examined the details of what happened elsewhere, so I’m going to focus on some of the bigger questions that this…

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What Happened With GameStop?

It’s a bit of an understatement to say that GameStop has been in the news lately. There are a lot of people opining about what is going on, but we want to cut through that and look at what actually happened (we…

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Is the Value Premium Pining for the Fjords?

There’s no magic formula for investing. The financial markets seem to take some sort of cosmic joy in bringing people back down to Earth. And it’s value investing’s turn – in fact, it’s been value investing’s turn for a while now. To put it mildly, this has been a rough decade and a half for value stocks.

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Is Buying an Annuity in a Zero Interest Rate Environment a Good Idea?

The Federal Reserve’s decision to cut its benchmark federal funds rate from 1% to a range of 0% raises significant questions for those reassessing their retirement nest egg—a common occurrence following a dramatic selloff in equities according to research conducted by Indiana University’s Alessandro Previtero —and the value of annuities in providing guaranteed lifetime income.

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Is Buying an Annuity in a Bear Market a Good Idea?

As the stock market experienced unprecedented growth over the past eleven years, many people were naturally less interested in the lifetime income options from pensions or annuities. Who wouldn’t rather have all the assets today so they can invest them with the idea of earning high returns?

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Adjustments For A Conservative Return Assumption

Consider three scenarios: An individual investing a lump-sum amount for thirty years An individual saving a fixed percentage of a constant inflation-adjusted salary at the end of each year over a thirty-year accumulation period An individual withdrawing the maximum sustainable constant inflation-adjusted…

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