11 Most Read Articles of the Week!

1. 5 Red Flags That Will Cause Your Prospects to Dismiss You

You never see it coming, and you may never know the reason why. A prospective client you have carefully cultivated agrees to a meeting to learn more about how you can help them. It seems to go well. Their heads were nodding up and down, and they laughed at your joke. At the end of the 30-minute meeting, you suggest the next step with an offer to follow up with them. Turning toward the door, they reply, “We’ll let you know.” — Don Connelly

2. Value Stocks Are Catching Up. Here’s Why.

The stock market is broadening out. There’s good and bad news there. If you have only been following the stock market since the start of 2021, you would think pretty highly of so-called “value” stocks. That is the market segment that includes stocks and sectors that tend grow their earnings slower than “growth stocks.” — Rob Isbitts

3. There's Value and There's Deep Value. The Latter Merits Looks, Too.

When it comes to explaining value stocks and funds to clients, advisors don't have to stretch because the strategy is straight-forward and many clients are already familiar with it. Put simply, traditional value investing centers around identifying securities that trade at discounts relative to fundamentals, such as price-to-book, price-to-earnings, cash flow or dividends, among others. Doing that on one's own can be burdensome, hence many advisors (and their clients) prefer funds – active and passive – for value exposure. — Todd Shriber

4. Does the Value of Advice Increase Over Time?

When it comes to valuing your advice to clients what is a “fair” rate or price?  $100 per hour seems pretty cheap for any professional – plumbers cost more than that, right? But what about $1,000 per hour? That’s not actually a bad rate if someone can create $5,000 of value for a customer…expecially if they can do it with only 15 minutes of advice, right? Valuing financial advice is definitely problematic, and the new trend of lobbyists and theorists trying to find a “fair” value is nothing more than a futile academic exercise at best..or social engineering at worst. — Tony Vidler

5. Human Cognition: The Enemy of Bitcoin Adoption

We humans can be a stubborn bunch and it's often said human behavior doesn't change much. For fans of market history and related quips such as “history doesn't always, but it often rhymes,” there you have it. In financial markets, what happened in the past can be instructive today and tomorrow because human emotions – particularly the powerful ones like fear and greed – don't change much. Alright, I admit I'm not a psychologist (I did one psychology class in college, got an “A), but all this human emotion/evolution is relevant to one of today's hottest assets: Bitcoin. — Todd Shriber

6. How Can Financial Advisors Use Testimonials on Their Website

Here's what I suggest, the easiest way to start displaying and collecting client reviews is to set up and optimize a Google My Business page. And once you've done that, it'll make it really easy to direct people to that Google page to leave you a review ... — Samantha Russell

7. How Advisors Can Stand Out From the Crowd

If you want to improve your business, clearly the focus has to be on doing something different. Whatever you’re doing right now is perfect if you want to stay as you are, but it’s unlikely to get you where you want to go. If you’re up for that journey then the place to start is by taking a closer look at your existing client base. Your existing client data can tell you a lot about who you really serve and I emphasise the word “really” because often the owners and advisers in a firm believe they serve a wide range of client types. — Brett Davidson

8. Wall Street Expects These 3 Stocks to Gain Over 100% In the Next Year

Since the markets bottomed out in March 2020, investors have experienced an unprecedented rally primarily driven by strong performance in technology stocks. Since March 23, 2020, the S&P 500 is up 86% while the tech-heavy NASDAQ more than doubled from the bear market depths. While these major indices are trading near record highs, a few stocks continue to trade a massive discount compared to analyst consensus price targets. — Finscreener

9. Is the Stock Market’s Collapse Near?

Because stock market performance is an essential factor in U.S. Treasury behavior, I study it closely. I wrote a paper in 2012 that, among other things, examined the consistency (or inconsistency) of long-term S&P 500 performance. Between our founder Robert Kessler’s indelible memory of slogging his way through the futile stock market of the 1960s and 1970s and my study of the long-term history of the S&P 500, you will see below that the powerful up-trend of the last 12 years is not a comprehensive representation of the stock market. — Eric Hickman

10. The Impact Young Advisors Are Having On the Financial Industry

Being a young advisor in an industry dominated by older generations can be tough, but it also brings many new opportunities to the field.  — Matt Ackermann

11. Do Your Clients Feel Unique, Heard and Empowered?

What does delivering an exceptional client experience mean in 2021? How do you deliver a good client experience when it is no longer about having a big office and embossed stationary, or even about having the most amazing user-friendly website and mounting fancy client events? — Paulette Filion and Judy Paradi