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1. How To Replicate Your 10 Best Clients
Is your referral strategy as effective as it can be? If not, it’s a common challenge for today’s advisor. Some may discover they are too busy serving their current clients to find time to pursue new prospects. Others may dedicate hours and lots of money to hunting for new business, only to come up relatively empty. Or they may find that the returns hardly justify the effort and expense, perhaps because the prospects they find are not a good fit for their business. — Axos Advisor Services
2. Is Fear Holding Back Advisors From Changing Firms?
We look at transitions as actually a huge opportunity for advisors to re-explain their value to their clients talk about how they are constantly looking to add additional benefits and services to their clients. So they're doing this for them. During that process, they're also reevaluating what the clients has for assets, talking to them about all of these new services they can offer. So a lot of times, they're actually picking up referrals from the client, because the client is feeling like, wow, my advisor is putting all this work in to benefit me in the long term. — Andree Mohr
3. Three Reasons It’s Time to Add High-Yield Bonds
With central banks tightening aggressively to beat down inflation, growth is beginning to slow—and the risk of recession is ticking higher. Historically, creditworthiness has soured when growth slows. But instead of bracing for a wave of downgrades and defaults, we think income-seeking investors should embrace the high-yield corporate bond sector. — Will Smith and Gershon Distenfeld
4. Achieving an Effective Marketing Strategy for Your Firm with Susan Theder and Samantha Russell
Doug, Susan Theder and Samantha Russell addressed a grab bag of questions and scenarios Susan & Samantha are seeing in the marketplace today, and how they would recommend developing different marketing strategies for each. They provided their expert advice to three firms that hold widely common concerns. — Power Your Advice
5. StoneCastle Cash Management: Making Cash Relevant Again
Blame rising bond yields or slumping equities. Either way, cash – a long-ignored asset class – is back. After what feels like a generation of cash being out of favor, it’s not surprising that some advisors are caught off-guard by the resurgence. StoneCastle Cash Management stands ready to aid advisors in their quests to add value for clients seeking alternatives to basic bank accounts for their held-away or savings cash. — StoneCastle Cash Management
6. Is Wealth Management Too Expensive for Investors?
One of the reasons many investors never find an advisor or seek wealth management is because they believe that wealth management is too expensive for the services they need. In fact, according to research conducted by Spectrem Group with investors with $100,000 to $25 million of net worth (not including the value of their primary residence), a quarter of investors believe that wealth management is too expensive. Forty percent of investors are somewhat neutral regarding this idea, and just over a third of investors are open to engaging in wealth management. — Catherine McBreen
7. 60/40 Outlook Not All Doom and Gloom
With bonds and stocks languishing this years, frustration with 60/40 portfolio construction is understandable and palpable. How bad are things for 60/40 in 2022? As of July 8, this year is shaping up to be one of the three worst years since 1976 for what was once the gold standard of portfolio construction. As of that date, 60/40, as measured by the S&P 500 and the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, was lower by almost 15%. On an annual basis, the only year that was more dismal was 2008 – the height of the global financial crisis – when 60/40 shed 20.1%. — Todd Shriber
8. Why Do Some Investors Avoid Advisors?
You have run into someone who is belligerent about advisors. They invest on their own and would never, ever invest with a financial advisor. You wonder what an insurance agent or financial advisor ever did to them! Why do some people feel so negatively about advisors? — Bryce Sanders
9. ESG Underperformance Will Be Its Undoing
RBC Wealth Management surveyed over 900 US-based clients recently. 49% said that performance and returns were a higher priority than ESG impact, up from 42% last year. “The story told is you don’t have to give up returns in order to do ESG. But everyone assumed that you would get the same exact return profile as a traditional benchmark. Which is absolutely not true because traditional benchmarks are not looking at ESG factors.” – Kent McClanahan, VP Responsible Investing at RBC. RBC clients also expressed skepticism about the ESG label. 74% of those surveyed said many companies provide misleading information about their ESG initiatives. As noted, the SEC’s proposal for new restrictions to ensure ESG funds accurately describe their investments could address that problem. — Lance Roberts
10. Is the Future of Crypto Is Still Mainstream?
After all the turbulence of the crypto winter, things seem to have bottomed out and a mini-rally is underway. Keep that in mind as you can see from the comments and stats that a lot of people think that crypto is here to stay, regardless of the recent dip. Buy the dip? Maybe or maybe not, but longer term, what will happen? — Chris Skinner
11. Important: Are Your Stocks in Stage 1, 2, 3, or 4?
Every investor is asking the same question: When will stocks bottom? As you know, the S&P 500 is down 20% this year and firmly in a bear market. Since 1929, the S&P 500’s had 14 bear markets... lasting around 19 months, on average. Which means if the current bear market lasts an “average” length, we’ll see the bottom next summer. But asking when stocks as a whole will bottom is the WRONG question. Instead, investors should be asking… Which stocks will bottom first? — Justin Spittler