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Want to stay up-to-date with all of our posts? Sign up for our daily e-mail newsletter and get all the good stuff when it comes out. Quote of the Day “Just like a roller coaster, the only market participants who get injured are those who jump off. In market speak, this means selling stocks during […]

Thursdays at Abnormal Returns are all about startup and venture capital links. You can check out last week’s links including a look at the growing IPO pipeline for 2019. Quote of the Day “The mistake I think we make in the startup/tech/VC sector is that we look at things like Google/Amazon/Facebook/Twitter, or more recently Uber/Airbnb/Slack, […]

The SEC Wednesday announced that JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. will pay more than $135 million to settle charges of improper handling of “pre-released” American Depositary Receipts. ADRs – U.S. securities that represent foreign shares of a foreign company – require a corresponding number of foreign shares to be held in custody at a depositary bank. […]

A mystery! Who doesn’t love a good mystery? Bloomberg headline: Magellan’s journey from icon to afterthought may be the starkest example of the eroding trust in professional stockpickers. Feingold’s record is strong: Under his tenure, which began in September 2011, Magellan has bested the S&P 500 index every full year but 2016. Annualized gains have […]

Mutual funds suffered redemptions of $56.2 billion in the week ended Dec. 19. That’s the biggest outflow since the week ended Oct. 15, 2008, according to data released Wednesday by the Investment Company Institute. And the numbers over the last several weeks have only gotten worse as the chart below shows. Yet even as investors […]

Although 2018 ended on a down note with the stock market selling off, I feel good about how things unfolded. I’ll take the ratio of three good quarters to one bad quarter any year. Believe it or not, my theme for 2018 was: back to early retirement life. I pushed myself to the point of […]

Podcast #86 Show Notes: Legacy Holdings in Taxable Account A listener emailed me recently who is lucky enough to get a generous gift every year from her grandparents of $14,000 in stocks. The stock is all from a single company that her grandfather worked for decades ago. Because he bought it early in the companies […]

Warning – this is going to piss half of you off and make the other half think I am a Trumper. Sorry to disappoint all of you in advance. There’s been a lot of angst and finger pointing in recent weeks about the downturn in the stock market. The easiest target, and the most vocal, […]

To say that U.S. stocks trading has been odd this week seems like an understatement. All three major U.S. indexes gained at least 4 percent on Wednesday. That’s the first time that’s happened since 2011. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 Index both came a hair shy of topping 5 percent. The […]

U.S. stocks staged one of the biggest rallies of the 9 1/2 year bull market after coming within points of seeing it end, with major indexes surging at least 4.9 percent. Crude jumped almost 10 percent. All but one member of the S&P 500 finished in the green, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more […]

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. announced Wednesday that it fined Morgan Stanley Smith Barney $10 million for anti-money laundering program and supervisory failures that spanned a period of more than five years. FINRA found that Morgan Stanley’s AML program failed to meet the requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act because of three shortcomings: • […]

Want to stay up-to-date with all of our posts? Sign up for our daily e-mail newsletter and get all the good stuff when it comes out. Quote of the Day “The problem for markets today is not the Fed. The problem for markets today is the guy in the White House.” (Ben Hunt) Chart of […]

Executive Summary Becoming a successful small business owner is one of the hardest things that a person can do. For decades, the chances of a small business with employees making it past the five-year mark has been remarkably consistent, at roughly a 50/50 proposition. And at 10 years, the numbers are even worse, with only […]

With New Years only one week away, there is still time to make some smart end of the year money moves to set you up well in the new year. Here are some steps you can take to get your finances on track before 2019: 1.  End of the Year Money Moves – Prepare for […]

Wednesday is all about personal finance here at Abnormal Returns. You can check out last week’s links including a look at why so many people are obsessed with early retirement. Retirement Behavior Year-end Lists Personal finance

One strategy to consider as you think about making Roth IRA conversions is the idea of “fill out the bracket”.  With this strategy, you consider your income level and what bracket you’re in, and if it makes sense, convert enough of your IRA or QRP (such as a 401k) to effectively use up the remainder […]

You are going to run into people who are so certain of what higher volatility means for the markets that it’s as if they are reciting their own name and phone number. Be terrified of their indefatigability about a topic like this. Imagine the sheer arrogance and borderline mental illness required for a person to […]

[Editor’s Note: The following was submitted by author, podcaster, mortgage lender, and long-time WCI advertiser, Josh Mettle. Josh specializes in financing physicians, dentists, CRNAs, and other professionals with highly specialized professional loan programs. Josh is also a fourth generation real estate investor and owns a number of rental homes, apartment units, and mortgages. This would […]

Tuesdays are all about academic (and practitioner) literature at Abnormal Returns. You can check out last week’s links including a look at how to reduce ‘portfolio fragility.’ Quote of the Day “The empirical evidence for low volatility is very fragile…Fifteen of the 16 volatility measures we looked at don’t work using the broadest sample of […]

Executive Summary Welcome back to the 104th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast! My guest on today’s podcast is Saundra Davis. Saundra is the founder of Sage Financial Solutions, which provides training and develops certification programs to teach people the skills of financial coaching. What’s unique about Saundra, though, is the way that she’s integrating […]

Since the S&P 500 topped on September 21st, Berkshire Hathaway may have seen something on the order of over $30 billion in stock market drawdowns. It’s a startling number, even off of a large base of invested capital. According to Jim Sloan, writing at Seeking Alpha, the Berkshire portfolio’s losses from Apple alone could be […]

Months after being charged with securities fraud by the SEC, Phillip Frost, the former chairman of Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services Inc. and the largest shareholder, has sold most of his stake back to the firm. In a press release Monday afternoon, Ladenburg Thalmann said that it had repurchased close to 51 million shares from Mr. […]

U.S. stocks fell to the lowest since May 2017 as the turmoil in Washington kept investors on edge after the worst week for American equities in almost a decade. Crude sank below $45 a barrel and the dollar tumbled. The S&P 500 slid for a fourth day, edging ever closer to a bear market after […]

Want to stay up-to-date with all of our posts? Sign up for our daily e-mail newsletter and get all the good stuff when it comes out. Quote of the Day “The bottom line is that things don’t look great. But this also isn’t the second coming of the GFC. We shouldn’t be surprised that the […]

Mondays are all about financial adviser-related links here at Abnormal Returns. You can check out last week’s links including a look at how financial advisers should be evaluated. Fee models Communications Podcasts Advisers

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The U.S. government shutdown has entered a third day. It’s likely to last at least until late in the week, and maybe into January, as the White House and Democrats remain at an impasse over President Donald Trump’s demand for billions of dollars in border wall funding. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Saturday […]

Executive Summary As we enter the holiday season and 2018 winds to a close, I am once again so thankful to all of you, the ever-growing number of readers who continue to regularly visit this Nerd’s Eye View blog (and share the content with your friends and colleagues, which we greatly appreciate!). Over the past […]

Limbo—that’s where to find Wall Street when it comes to cryptocurrencies. Squeamish from the start about pursuing profits in one of the darker corners of finance, established firms this year slowed their already halting efforts to make a business out of Bitcoin mania. While none has thrown in the towel, and some continue to develop […]

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has taken another step toward making it more difficult for brokers to have customer complaints expunged from their public records. The Finra Board of Governors announced Friday the approval of enhanced training and guidance for arbitration panelists who rule on expungement requests, 93% of which are currently granted. The board […]

Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment. Oops! Somebody jumped the gun on a website going live. I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading. Related posts

As we come to the end of the year, I want to highlight the top posts published in 2018. This year I spent more time than normal  writing cautionary articles partly because I felt the good times were going away. It was important to share my growing concerns about the economy in order to better prepare the FS community. My first […]

[Editor’s Note: For those interested in the CityVest/Pathfinder deal discussed last week, the conference call with Alan Donenfeld is today at 1 pm EST. There will be another on Wednesday, same time. 515-739-1038, ID 688350#] Guess what? The IRS (and thus Congress, the government, and Americans) wants you to give to charity. They know (like […]

Want to stay up-to-date with all of our posts? Sign up for our daily e-mail newsletter and get all the good stuff when it comes out. Quote of the Day “People always need some place to store their junk…No one is going to start moving their stuff out just to save $3 or $4 a […]

Can President Trump fire the Chairman of the Federal Reserve? This is the question that we’ve been forced to ponder this weekend as news that Mr. Trump has been asking his advisors about it has been widely reported. The spin machine went into overdrive, putting Treasury Secretary Mnuchin out on Twitter to deny it and […]

Want to stay up-to-date with all of our posts? Sign up for our daily e-mail newsletter and get all the good stuff when it comes out. Quote of the Day “A single iPhone at 1980 energy-efficiency would require as much power as a Manhattan office building. Similarly, a single data center at circa 1980 efficiency […]

Saturdays are all about longform links on Abnormal Returns. You can check out last week’s linkfest including a look at the declining power and influence of the IRS. Quote of the Day “It’s not really surprising that technology released into the wild is used in unanticipated ways. The human reaction to innovations is one of […]

You don’t know how many times I’ve heard something along these lines from fellow physicians, “I’d love to own a real estate investment property but I don’t want to be called in the middle of the night for plumbing issues. It’s too much of a hassle.” If this resonates with you, then a great solution […]

Executive Summary Enjoy the current installment of “weekend reading for financial planners” – this week’s edition kicks off with a fresh look at the rise of T shares and Clean shares, which emerged after the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule as a way to provide less conflicted mutual fund share class options for broker-dealers to make […]

by Bob French, CFA December 21, 2018 There’s been a lot of ‘sturm und drang’ around what the markets have been doing lately. The financial media has been talking about how this is the sign of the inevitable end of the world.   Of course, we’ve had a few things lately that were also supposed to be signs the world’s crashing down on […]

The Securities and Exchange Commissioned brought its first enforcement actions against robo-advisers on Friday, charging Wealthfront and Hedgeable with making false statements about investment products and publishing misleading advertising. Wealthfront told clients its tax-loss harvesting strategy, a centerpiece of the digital advice startup’s marketing, would monitor all client accounts for transactions that would trigger a […]

Former Morgan Stanley broker Ami Forte responded to a Finra lawsuit charging her with churning by arguing that the suit reflects the industry’s longstanding discrimination against women. On Thursday, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. hit Ms. Forte with a suit alleging that in 2011 and 2012, she engaged in unsuitable trading in the account […]

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators wants financial regulators to examine whether Robinhood Financial misled its customers by offering what seemed to be checking and savings accounts but were really investment accounts. Senate Banking Committee lawmakers sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. asking them to review […]