Author: StratiFi

Risk has always been present for investors. It used to be that a diversified stock and bond portfolio was usually enough to protect clients from the worst of the financial markets and global economy. As clients aged or grew more…

When Howard Marks speaks, it pays to listen. The chairman of Oaktree Capital recently sat for a lengthy interview with Shane Parrish of Farnam Street in which he covered many key issues, including risk management,  the role of luck and…

Steven M. Sears, StratiFi’s chief investment officer, recently focused on some of the key attributes of successful investing in a column that he wrote for Barron’s. At a time when many investors are debating what happens next to the stocks,…

The top 1% of Americans now control over one-third of the nation’s total investable assets. These high-net-worth (HNW) investors are the proverbial golden geese sought by many advisory firms. And why not? More assets per client; and the more you…

Your client is worth $25 million, yet you only manage a small portion of that total. Sound familiar? The issue of clients with accounts spread across multiple advisory firms often arises during discussions of a firm’s billable assets. Yet, the…

Interest rates are rising. If your clients are asking how you’re moving to protect their capital, you’re not alone. Global money market funds saw the largest inflows of any open-end fund class in the first quarter of 2018, according to…

If you follow financial industry trades or perhaps just skim the headlines, you know the term “risk” is omnipresent. It’s not surprising given the entire investment world is loosely balanced on a grand scale of risk and return. Not every…

When Willie Sutton, a famous bank robber, was asked why he robbed banks, he answered because that’s where the money is. And so it is with the stock market. Most people invest because they want to make as much money…

Everyone wants to make money in the stock market so we’re going to let you in on a secret. The way to make $1 million on Wall Street is to start with $2 million. If you’ve been around the markets…

Do your clients trust you? Do they think you are indispensable or an easily replaced commodity? We’re asking those questions in a spirit of helpfulness. Trust and commoditization are among the securities industry’s greatest weaknesses and challenges. If clients do…

We live in an era when investors have more information readily available than the world’s most accomplished investors ever imagined just 50, or even 100 years ago. Still, many people complain that it is hard to find useful information in…

At a recent Barron’s conferences for the nation’s top advisors, we were surprised by a recurring topic: Amazon.com. Everywhere we turned, someone was discussing how Amazon.com was impacting their businesses. The online retailer, at least since we last checked, has…

Of all the risk factors that confront investors, concentrated-stock risk is perhaps the sweetest. If you have this risk in your portfolio, you likely picked a stock that has blossomed in value, or you participated in an initial public offering…

One of the market’s wise men – someone who is known and respected by everyone but shuns the limelight – believes the financial markets represent pure chaos. He contends that indexes, and exchange-traded funds and other financial products exist to…

At this very moment, some advisor, somewhere in the securities industry, is confronting a difficult reality with their clients. They know that bonds are often as risky as stocks, and that stocks and bonds often behave like each other. Yet,…

Volatility is one of the most widely used, yet misunderstood, words in the investment world. It means so many things to so many people that volatility is at risk of becoming another Wall Street word that does not mean much…

Winston Churchill once quipped that America and England are two countries separated by a common language. We have often thought of this as our travels, and lives, keep us alternating between Wall Street and Main Street. On Wall Street, most…

We want to start an ongoing conversation with you about risk and return. We want to move beyond headlines, and the incessant focus on buying this fund, or selling that stock or bond. We want to get away from the…