Month: November 2017

Our Alzheimer’s Project

© Can Stock Photo / HighwayStarz

Mentally challenging activities and social engagement may support brain health, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

We love doing puzzles. Some companies have bonds outstanding that are trading at half their face value because the issuing company has evident problems. Which companies have a good chance to survive and pay all the interest and principal due? Which ones are likely to go broke, with losses to bond owners?

To solve that kind of puzzle, we need to read financial statements, do analysis, search through SEC filings, study the annual reports, and review action in the bond market. And that puzzle might lead to another one: how can we quickly put $1 million or $2 million to work for you, with everyone getting an appropriate amount of the bonds at a favorable price?

You provide us with puzzles, too. When can I afford to retire? How should I balance the split between cash liquidity and long-term core investments? What are my options for the dormant 401(k)? How should I pay for a new home?

Figuring out how to maintain the infrastructure of staff and resources to manage the needs of more than a hundred investment advisory clients is another puzzle.

So we have the mental part of the prescription covered. The other piece is social engagement. How many times have you heard me say I’m in business to talk all day? We share coffee and conversation, have breakfast or lunch together, talk on the phone and by email—and increasingly through Twitter or LinkedIn.

In addition to engaging with you, the team in the office is in constant contact with one another to take care of your business.

I didn’t create the enterprise at age forty so that when I was in my sixties I would have a way to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s. But two of my heroes worked to age 92 in their businesses, working effectively with people they enjoyed, and they were joyful and vibrant all the way.

Anyway, thank you for your role in our Alzheimer’s project. If you’d like to talk about this or any other pertinent topic, please email us or call. (You can learn more or donate to the real Alzheimer’s project at www.alz.org.)

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

Bonds are subject to market and interest rate risk if sold prior to maturity. Bond values will decline as interest rates rise and bonds are subject to availability and change in price.

Aligning Principles and Economics

Clients, we recently wrote about our quest to align our pricing with our values. The advisors of Leibman Financial Services service $50 million in advisory assets through LPL Financial. The fees charged could better reflect your contribution to investment results through effective investing attitudes and behavior. We are going forward with changes by year-end.

We believe that people can learn to frame things more effectively, to see the long term, to find out a temporary drop is NOT a loss. New clients usually require more intensive communication (and hand-holding, in some cases). It makes sense to charge them a little more, and reduce costs for you longer term clients.

For the vast majority of you, “heads you win, tails you don’t lose.” Generally, if the new schedule indicates a fee reduction, that will go into effect as soon as possible. If it shows an increase, we will leave the pricing the same. Current pricing is a hash, depending on when accounts were originally opened. So we will be communicating with each of you.

The new table rewards your persistence three ways.

1. A fee reduction after two years, shown in the table below.

2. Additional reductions after eight and sixteen years, about 3% to 6% depending on household account value.

3. The potential for assets to grow over time tends to put longer-term clients into higher value brackets, with lower fees.

pricing

In a few cases (particularly for newer clients), the table may indicate a higher fee than what we currently charge. Please do not be alarmed—we are not going to try to jack up our rates on anyone we are doing business with. Consider yourself grandfathered in.

Clients, with this project we have attempted to align our economics more closely with our values. We will be in touch about your specific situation. If you would like to discuss this or any other issue at greater length, please write or call.

Additional reading:

About learning to live with volatility: They Say You Can’t Handle the Truth

About discretion to act on your behalf: Freedom to Decide vs. Freedom to Debate

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results.

All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.

The Things We Do Together

things we do

We figured out a long time ago that three things we do matter the most.

Clients, talking with you is at the top. We connect to understand your situation and collaborate with you on your plans and planning. You are the most important part of our business. Otherwise we have no one for whom to research investments or manage portfolios through LPL Financial.

Research and portfolio management are the other two core activities. Our principles drive both of these: avoid stampedes in the market, seek the best bargains, ‘own the orchard for the fruit crop.’ And both are informed by our connection and collaboration with you.

Although each member of the team serves you in multiple ways, we think of our support infrastructure as the trade desk, the research desk, and the logistics desk. (By logistics, we mean taking care of the details of doing business with you.) These functions connect our main activities.

A funny thing happened when we concentrated on the three activities that are most valuable to you. Less pleasant things that dominate the schedules of most financial types simply disappeared: selling, searching for prospects, marketing to strangers. Ever since, we’ve been able to spend a much higher fraction of our time talking with you and striving to grow your buckets.

If your buckets grow, you like it and our revenues grow. Why waste time and energy on strangers when we can invest it in our friends? It sure raises the enjoyment factor for us.

Clients, we do not know if this is of any interest to you. Writing it helped clarify our thoughts about what we are doing and why. If you would like to discuss this or any other pertinent topic, please email us or call.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.

Have We Mentioned How Wonderful You Are?

© Can Stock Photo / mikdam

The foundational theory here at 228 Main is people can gain effective perspectives and productive attitudes about investing. It doesn’t matter if you were born that way or were capable of learning, you as a group are special. We believe your behavior is one of the keys to long term investment results.

Consequently, while some colleagues live with frustration as untrained customers fall prey to counterproductive behavior—selling out low, chasing performance, jumping on fads—you and we are appreciated for our mutual faith in each other. No wonder some advisors are looking for an exit strategy, and I’m planning to work to age 92!

You do the difficult things, like going against the crowd, listening to people at the salon or barbershop or café or water cooler, and yet still stay the course. A benefit of my long commute is time to think about the business. I spent a day recently pondering this: how might we make things better for you?

If we change our pricing philosophy to reflect total household assets under our management, including results through the years, we honor your role in creating those results. And if we price new clients a little higher for an initial period, we can offer small discounts for longevity to you longer-term clients. This would better reflect our values.

This presents two issues. One, we tinkered with the schedule over the years, and sometimes failed to update existing clients to the new schedule. Two, our general philosophy has been to use a volume discount based on net invested capital, excluding changes due to investment results. We need to figure out how to implement changes in a way that makes sense to you. We have no intention of chasing anyone down and asking them for more money. Our growth allows us to offer breaks where they have been earned (after all, it is ultimately you to whom we owe that growth!) without needing to claw back money from any clients.

Clients, you have heard us express admiration for the very special group to which you belong. We talk about the mutual benefits of our shared perspectives on investing. We have said in as many ways as we know how that your behavior is large factor in investment outcomes. The one thing we have not done is align the economics of our shop with those noble sentiments.

We are committed to doing so. We will be communicating the results of our work in the near future. If you have any questions about this or any other pertinent topic, email us or call.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results.

All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.

Eternal Truths and Changing Times

© Can Stock Photo / devon

228 Main Street, the real-world inspiration for 228Main.com, sits in the middle of beautiful downtown Louisville, Nebraska. The village was platted out just after the Civil War; some descendants of its founders are reading these words.

The building, a typical commercial Victorian structure of the kind that dots small town Main Streets through much of the country, was built at the end of the 19th century. It housed The Louisville Courier newspaper and print shop. More than a century later, it is the center of the business universe for our 21st century digital communications, descended one might say from those earlier forms of media.

When The Louisville Courier began publishing, there was no traffic on the roads to neighboring towns during much of the winter and spring. Horses and wagons could not navigate the muddy roads, especially along the Platte River bottom. The newspaper could only serve the village, and little else.

228Main.com was similarly conceived as a way to communicate with a small community: you who are our friends or clients or both. We provide answers to the questions you ask us, tell the stories that we used to tell only one or two people at a time, and a lot more. 228Main.com is a way to keep our community informed, people who share an understanding about life and investing that we believe is special.

Unlike The Louisville Courier, 228Main is not limited geographically. Since it began in 2015, 26,000 views of its pages came from the United States, and another 3,000 from all over the world—103 other countries. We really do not have time to concern ourselves with anyone but you; the interest of others is perhaps a sign that our work is on the right track.

We recite this history to illustrate that some things are fundamental and unchanging—principles, values, community, human nature. But methods and tactics and the routines of daily life and other things evolve and change. Our object is two-fold: to understand and apply the universal truths, and also keep abreast of the changing times. This seems to be working for you and for us.

Clients, two way communication is vital to get you to your goals. If you would like to discuss any pertinent topic, or update us on your life and objectives, please call us or email.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results.

All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.

It’s Open Season!

© Can Stock Photo / kingjon

In recent years we have learned a lot more than we ever wanted to about two things. Potentially catastrophic health situations taught us a lesson about insurance and benefits and health care providers. We aren’t the experts—we are not telling you what to do—but we do know a thing or two.

Medicare recipients face the same basic choice that many working age people have confronted. Do you accept some limitations on the doctors and facilities and treatments you might use in return for lower costs or other minor advantages? Or do you go with more expensive arrangements that give you greater choice?

Like many important decisions, this highly personal decision would be a lot easier if we had a crystal ball. If you are healthy and stay healthy, the less expensive plan saves money. But if you want or need specialized care from premier providers, the more expensive option may be more likely to cover superior choices.

(We aren’t kidding about not being experts. Consult advocacy groups or online resources or professionals in the field. This is general information only.)

A long time ago, I was confronted with the option of joining an HMO plan, back when they were first invented. At first blush, the possibility of ever being powerless to switch to the doctors and facilities I believed would save my life was intolerable. We have always paid more to have more flexibility. This is a personal preference.

Lots of times, the centers of excellence—premier health care institutions—are simply not covered by Medicare Advantage plans or HMO’s. (Know your own plan; this essay does not replace information you need about your situation!) Care at the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, etc. is not inexpensive.

The only point we want to make is that Medicare Open Enrollment Season, when you might switch from HMO-type Medicare Advantage Plans to Traditional Medicare, runs through December 7th. If you switch in this period, you may purchase supplemental or MediGap coverage with no questions about pre-existing conditions, regardless of health.

The moral of the story is, if your health has changed for the worse and you want more choice of medical providers, NOW is the time to dig in and figure it out. Open season comes but once a year on Medicare. You might start at www.medicare.gov to begin your education.

Clients, we usually end our stories with a request to call or email us if you want to talk more. In this case, please do not! We just told you all we know. (If you are in an employer plan, not yet on Medicare, you may face a similar situation. Talk to your HR department or benefits people.)

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

About Those Good Old Days

© Can Stock Photo / Chuckee

A client recently expressed a desire to return to the good old days, when we didn’t have all this turmoil and trouble. Wouldn’t we all like that?

But we human beings have some quirks. One of them is the universal sense that, back in the misty past, things were normal, or stable. This idea may not stand up to scrutiny.

If we confine our study just to the economy and markets, the history we’ve lived through has this to say:

1. In the early 1970’s, a mania centering on big blue chip stocks hit the market. It was thought that you could just buy them at any price, and own them forever while they went up and up—“one decision stocks” they were called. Prices ballooned to extremely high levels. The major stock market averages peaked, then sold off more than 50%1.

2. The 1970’s also saw a pair of Arab oil embargoes that resulted in spiking gasoline prices, shortages, gas stations out of gas, and rationing. Over the course of the decade, inflation rose, eventually going over 10%. Unemployment went over 10% in the mid-decade recession2.

3. The early 1980’s began with back-to-back recessions, 15% mortgage interest rates, and inflation at unprecedented levels. The unemployment rate went over 10% again. Long term bonds declined in price as interest rates rose. A mania in oil stocks that began in the 70’s ended badly early in the decade3. The biggest one-day plunge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average ever—22% in a single day—happened in 19871.

4. The 1990’s began with the cleanup from the savings and loan crisis. The Federal deposit guarantee fund had gone broke, along with thousands of financial institutions. The value of housing, which began to fall nationwide in the late 1980’s, didn’t recover until 19924. The bond market suffered its first annual loss in seventy years in 1994.

5. Clients, most of you remember the bursting of the tech bubble in 2000, the attacks on 9/11, and the so-called Great Recession of 2008-2009. You already know the fine points; it was not good fun for investors.

6. The current decade, free of recessions so far, has had a lot of ups and downs. The downgrading of US Treasury debt and the recurring Greek financial crisis were two of the main events. The zero-interest-rate policy of the Federal Reserve distorted prices in some sectors of the investment markets, some observers believe.

The resilience of the equity markets over these many decades is astonishing to us. We had all these challenges and issues, and somehow the country came out on the other side, every time. We suspect this general trend will continue. The problems of today will give way to solutions– and new problems–tomorrow. That seems to be how it works.

In the meantime, financial strategies that have worked through the decades may be the best way to approach the future. There will be winners and losers in every change and challenge. We may not be able to get back to those mythical good old days, but we can make the most of what we have to work with.

Clients, if you wish to discuss this, or your situation, please email or call.

1S&P Dow Jones Indices, https://us.spindices.com/indices/equity/dow-jones-industrial-average

2Federal Reserve Economic Data, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Unemployment and Inflation

3Federal Reserve Economic Data, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Oil Prices

4Federal Reserve Economic Data, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Housing Prices

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly.

All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.

Stock investing involves risk including loss of principal.

Bonds are subject to market and interest rate risk if sold prior to maturity. Bond values will decline as interest rates rise and bonds are subject to availability and change in price.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is comprised of 30 stocks that are major factors in their industries and widely held by individuals and institutional investors.