1. Our Industry Is Facing a Kodak Moment
Every financial advisor is familiar with the built-in nature of the solution-versus-prevention heuristic. For every client who started saving early and building wealth gradually to ensure a comfortable retirement, there are many others who waited until their late 50s and then tried to solve the problems resulting from a lack of planning. — Ken Haman
2. 5 Ways to Convert Prospects
Good news! Your marketing efforts are working. Prospects are booking calls through your website, sending you messages on social media, and calling the office directly. But how do you turn interested prospects into paying clients once they’ve made it this far? The answer may not be with you think. Or, at the very least, the answer might be the opposite of what your gut instinct is telling you to do. — Maribeth Kuzmenski
3. How to Find Affluent Clients
How to find clients, as well as attract them, in both a virtual and live environment. When you learn how to attract your ideal client, prospecting becomes a lot easier. — Annette Bau
4. How To Empower The Fearful Investor With Aaron Klein
There is an inherent risk to any investment. But selling as soon as you see red won’t increase your clients’ gains. In this episode, Matt Ackermann is joined by Aaron Klein, co-founder, and CEO of Riskalyze. Aaron discusses how financial advisors deal with investment risk and the impact it has on their clients. He reveals how many advisors discovered the benefits of tools such as Riskalyze during COVID and what it means for the future of investments. — Matt Ackermann
5. 10 Reasons Why Financial Planning Is Relevant Now
Remember telling clients the financial plan was a dynamic document? You meant if their life situation changed, the plan can be adjusted accordingly. If the plan is like a roadmap, if there’s an accident five miles ahead blocking the highway, your need to reroute your journey. Have you put this dynamic quality into practice? — Bryce Sanders
6. Considerations for Tax-Loss Harvesting Season
With just over two months left in 2021, meaning tax season is right around the corner, the tax-loss harvesting conversation is one advisors should be initiating with clients over the near-term. After all, plenty of advisors know their clients aren't tax experts and none of them want to pay more taxes than they're legally required to do. — Todd Shriber
7. 5 Bitcoin Developments You Need to Know About
I want to start by addressing the recent pullback in Bitcoin and Ether prices, as well as shares of crypto miners, since Bitcoin hit a new record high last week. It’s important for investors to remember that the crypto ecosystem remains, and is expected to remain, highly volatile. Whereas gold bullion and the S&P 500 have a standard deviation of ±1% over a single trading day, Bitcoin has one closer to ±4%. Ether’s is even higher at ±6%, and HIVE Blockchain Technologies can easily go up or down 8% during any given trading session. — Frank Holmes
8. Why Bitcoin Will Fail
When Bitcoin started its journey towards financial triumph, the price of a single BTC was less than a single penny. Barely a decade after its launch, Bitcoin rose from its humble beginnings to reach a market cap of 1 trillion US dollars. The rising price of the asset turned some of its fiercest critics to reconsider their beliefs about the digital currency, given the throngs of people and industry leaders that were enchanted by Bitcoin, which changed the world of finance. On the other hand, there remain others who think that Bitcoin is nothing more than a speculative asset bubble that is destined to pop, leaving people empty-handed once the dream of digital gold fades away. — Finscreener
9. Has the Government Run Out of Funding?
In recent months, there was a growing concern that policymakers would fail to come to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. As a result, the Treasury would be at risk of running out of funds to pay the governments’ obligations and eventually default on the nation’s debt. Indeed, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen confirmed that by mid- to late-October, the Treasury would run out of money after drawing down funds from the Treasury General Account (TGA) and exhausting its use of “extraordinary measures”. — Jordan Jackson
10. The Whole New “Stock Market” Forming in Crypto
Last week marked a huge milestone for crypto. After years in the making, it finally happened… On October 15, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the first-ever bitcoin ETF. On October 19, the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) debuted on the New York Stock Exchange. This is a big, big milestone. In short, this new ETF makes it easier than ever to access bitcoin (BTC)—through the stock market. It’s an opportunity for millions of investors who want exposure to bitcoin without having to open a dedicated crypto account. — Stephen McBride
11. Why Your Customer Service Must Absolutely Not Move to a Higher Level
There’s one good reason you shouldn’t consider revamping your service strategy with the objective of taking your service to the next higher level. It assumes you are consistently delivering your service promise today, and that is generally a false assumption. — Roy Osing