1. This Won’t End Well: Gen Z’ers Take On Debt To Invest
Young investors are taking on personal debt to invest in stocks. I have not personally witnessed such a thing since late 1999. At that time, “day traders” tapped credit cards and home equity loans to leverage their investment portfolios. For anyone who has lived through two “real” bear markets, the imagery of people trying to “daytrade” their way to riches is familiar. The recent surge in “Meme” stocks like AMC and Gamestop as the “retail trader sticks it to Wall Street” is not new. — Lance Roberts
2. How to Find Those Prospects That Don’t Want to be Found
Consider the “Invisible Rich.” They have money. They live near you, shopping in the same stores as you. You already know some rich people and many people pretending to be rich. There’s a third level, the rich who prefer to keep a low profile. How do you find them? Back in 2004 I wrote my book, “Captivating the Wealthy Investor.” It’s still available on Amazon. The chapter “Identifying the Invisible Rich” focuses on finding prospects among the wealthiest 2-5% within your local market. Here are some highlights of how you go about it. — Bryce Sanders
3. How Advisors Can Generate More Profitable Leads
One of the most important skills for growing your business is lead generation. In fact, the main reason that coaches, advisors, and consultants struggle is their inability to create a flow of qualified prospects in their funnel and then convert them to paying clients. However, this doesn’t need to happen to you. Today, I share exactly what causes lead generation challenges and how to avoid them, so you can generate more leads. — Annette Bau
4. The Central Nervous System to a Great Advisory Practice with Brian McLaughlin
What makes an advisory practice great, and holds everything together? The answer – CRM. In this episode, Matt Ackermann is joined by Brian McLaughlin, CEO of Redtail. Matt and Brian discuss Brian’s journey to creating Redtail and how he saw the need for advisors to strengthen client relationships, improve efficiency, and how this led to creating an integratable CRM tool that helps so many advisors and companies get and stay organized. — Matt Ackermann
5. Portfolio Risks Don’t Stop When Retirement Starts
In the buildup to retirement, plan participants and sponsors prioritize saving and protecting assets to generate a retirement income. As a result, most retirement income products focus on alleviating key risks such as outliving assets and market volatility. But different risks lurk on the other side of retirement too, such as premature death, interest-rate and inflation hikes, and missed growth opportunities. These so-called tail risks can change a participant’s retirement course just as much, and not all income products address them equally, if at all. — Andrew Stumacher
6. Building Your Advisory for the Long Term
In their Harvard Business Review article, Building A Startup That Will Last, Hemant Taneja and Ken Chenault challenge the mantra that has guided fast-growth tech startups. “The potential for career-defining gains got the best of many investors and advisors, and we failed to coach founders on the fundamentals of sustainability. We are only now recognizing how untenable the “move fast and break things” attitude was to become.” Taneja and Chenault outline a few tenets on how to build a business that will last for the long-term. You might recognise them. — Brett Davidson
7. AIG Supplying Advisors with Ample Annuities Credibility
Annuities remain pivotal parts of advisors' tool boxes and that's increasingly true in today's low-yield environment. With government and municipal bonds not doing the trick when it comes to yield, advisors have ample latitude with which to engage clients on the idea of lifetime income. However, the work doesn't end there for advisors. As experienced professionals know, hundreds of companies are out there pitching annuities, presenting money managers with a dizzying array of potential partners from which to choose. Offering a wide range of annuities and accompanying resources and tools, AIG is the annuities partner advisors are seeking. — Todd Shriber
8. Valuations Are Extreme Even With Rose Tinted Glasses
Many investors claim that comparing current valuations to the nifty fifties, roaring twenties, or the go-go nineties is for the birds. New technologies, aggressive monetary policy, and other factors make this time different, so they say. — Michael P. Lebowitz
9. Don’t Tomahawk Yourself Just to Own a Home
A house is a terrible investment. But for a lot of people, it’s the best investment. Let's unpack that… Unless you buy a new house, you will probably spend up to 1% of the value of the house on maintenance every year. Stuff breaks. Pipes burst, roofs leak, and occasionally the whole thing burns down. I live by the ocean, so the maintenance is relentless—constant leaks, not to mention the hurricanes. Plus, you have to pay to insure it, you have to pay the property taxes, and you have to pay for all the other stuff. And that's on top of the mortgage. Ordinarily, you wouldn’t characterize something that costs you money as a good investment. But house prices go up over time, right? Sure, over a 40-year time horizon, I feel pretty comfortable that the price of my house will go up, even if only because of inflation. But the price of a house can also go down. — Jared Dillian
10. Improving the Client Experience Using Advisor Team Data with John Pumphrey
In this episode of The Data Possible Podcast, SalesPage Technologies’ director of sales enablement solutions, John Pumphrey, discusses advisor team data including what it is, how much information is available, and how you can leverage it in your day-to-day business practice. He also talks about their new partnership with Discovery Data and how it will benefit asset managers. — Discovery Data
11. 20 Things I Wish Financial Advisors Knew About Marketing
I’m not going to waste your time with a long, boring introduction. Let’s get down to business… 1. Having a niche makes marketing more effective. Almost any marketing campaign can be improved by making it specific to a group of people. This is one of the easiest wins I can give financial advisors and I’m amazed at how many people still refuse to niche down. — James Pollard