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1. How Financial Advisors Should Manage Emotional Clients
People aren’t rational. We’re all creatures of emotion. Good salespeople bear that in mind. Whatever your training and education, as financial advisors, we’re not engineers. We’re not technicians. Not in the sales interview. We deal with people first. Not numbers. Not machines. — Don Connelly
2. Does a Vaccine Fix Anything?
Talks of a vaccine have been all over the news, with the potential of one being available, if not broadly, before the end of 2020. This has been greeted with cautious optimism, as many people are fearful of taking a vaccine that has been expedited through the FDA approval process. Other individuals are concerned that we do not have any evidence of long-term effectiveness or a study that shows there would not be long-term side effects. — Catherine McBreen
3. Eight Opportunities to Ask Your Client for More Money
We’ve all heard “timing is everything.” Advisors sometimes assume “We have all their money.” One of my first managers would make the case “There’s always more.” Lets look at eight times the timing might be right to ask for more assets. — Bryce Sanders
4. Finding Smaller Stocks That Can Shine
Smaller stocks offer diversification benefits and investment opportunities that can’t be found in their larger brethren. But because large-cap stocks have been so popular for the last 10 years, many investors have missed out on the compelling stories and advantages smaller companies can provide. Our research aims to shine some light on the universe of smaller stocks by examining their perceived risks, performance drivers and return potential—particularly amid a recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and recession. The time is right for investors to consider smaller investments that have the potential to sparkle. — Bruce Aronow, James Macgregor, Samantha S. Lau and Erik Turenchalk
5. When It Comes to These Businesses, the Best Time to Sell Is “Never”
The thing with world-class businesses is you don’t need to log into your account every day and monitor them. They’re simple. They solve problems. And you never have to worry about them “going out of style.” — Stephen McBride
6. Growth Annuities May Help Address the Two Retirement Challenges American's Face
You hear a lot of talk about the retirement crisis - In reality, American retirement savers face two big, but different, retirement challenges. Conflating them risks misdiagnosis and missing out on a potentially valuable solution that could help some retirement savers overcome both challenges. In this post, I will explain those challenges and how “growth annuities” may help. — Seth D. Harris
7. Why You Should Care About Kamala Harris’ Win
As remarkable as that accomplishment is, she follows in the footsteps of many notable women, from all walks of life. Women old and young, from politics and law to activism and the arts, are making themselves seen and heard in untold numbers. — Paulette Filion and Judy Paradi
8. Market Bulls Go Ballistic: Time To Reduce Risk
The current market advance has pushed back to more extreme bullish positioning. How long it can last is anyone’s guess. However, remember that markets ebb and flow around long-term moving averages. When markets rise too far above them, “gravity” tends to take over. — Lance Roberts
9. An Index Approach to Aligning with the Paris Agreement
Climate-related risks, whether physical or related to a transition to a lower carbon economy, are changing the risk-return profile of individual companies and entire industries, leading to new and increased risks in investors’ portfolios.1 In turn, institutional investors are under pressure to align their strategies with a maximum global temperature increase of 1.5oC as targeted by the Paris Agreement, raising questions about how to do so while respecting other investment constraints. — Stuart Doole, Véronique Menou and Kumar Neeraj
10. How Financial Advisors Can Find Their Client Value Proposition
Your Client Value Proposition (CVP) is essentially what you do for your clients that is worth paying for. It is important to distinguish this from just the services you provide. It needs to be looked at through the eyes of each client and what they determine as being of value. The tricky thing is that what clients may value may not be what takes the most time and effort from your team. It is often said that nobody wants to pay for an SOA but they will pay for the outcomes the advice in the SOA can deliver. — Graham Burnard
11. What's The One Thing That Changes Everything?
If you want your business to take a jump to a new level of performance, find the one issue that’s your biggest blockage and focus all of your energy on solving it. Don’t let up until it’s done and don’t try to drive several other projects forward at the same time. Counterintuitively, working on multiple priorities just slows your progress. — Brett Davidson