What were the most-read stories of the past year? We found a few surprises when we saw the topics that grabbed your attention. Financial Planning readers were hungry for knowledge of dividend-yielding stocks, they demanded to know why the AUM fee is toast and they chuckled (was it schadenfreude?) over the five dumbest investing bets.
These stories will be as valuable for advisors over the coming year as they were in 2015.
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When John Buckingham, CIO at Al Frank Asset Management, created this list for us in May, he pegged the yield of Navios Maritime (NYSE: NM) at 6.8%. It currently has a trailing 12 months yield of 6.64, according to YCharts. Will it stay there? Check back at the end of 2016.
There are blatant inequalities built into the AUM model, writes Bob Veres in his popular story Why the AUM Fee Is Toast. In addition, the AUM model creates a dangerous countercyclical mismatch between revenues and workload at firms, he wrote. Read more to see if you agree.
Financial Planning readers love to, well, read. This feature ran late in the year but quickly became one of our most-popular of 2015.
Among the picks: The Supernova Advisor: Crossing the Invisible Bridge to Exceptional Client Service and Consistent Growth, by Robert D. Knapp. “This quick and easy read is a great road map for an advisor who is looking to take their practice to the level of client service that would be the envy of other advisors,” says Larry Gekiere, senior vice president, Texas Capital Bank/Raymond James.
Do your clients fancy themselves long-term investors? Do they appreciate a buy-and-hold investment strategy? Check out these 20 best-performing funds for the past 25 years ranked by annualized returns from 1990 to 2015, according to Morningstar in October.
When Allan Roth looks at professionally designed investment portfolios other advisors have assembled for clients or prospects, he nearly always finds something that concerns him. Here are the five most-egregious offenders.
Oxford Financial Group was No. 1 in our 2015 annual ranking of RIA Leaders. This exclusive list highlights the most successful independent, fee-only players who have said no to the big offers. The other leaders? Click through the slideshow to see who rose to the top.
Over the past several decades, the number of investable asset classes has increased significantly, changing the world of portfolio management dramatically. The challenge of asset allocation now is no longer having too few ingredients to consider but rather selecting among an ever increasing array of sector-specific mutual funds and exotic ETFs. In his analysis, Which Asset Allocation Mix Outperforms?, Craig Israelsen helps advisors evaluate a wide variety of investment models.
The fundamental purpose of the 4% rule is to determine an appropriate spending floor for an older investor that is low enough to survive the worst return sequences that can be found in the historical data. Yet the reality is that in most historical scenarios, returns are not so bad as to necessitate an initial withdrawal rate of only 4%, writes Michael Kitces in Smart Fix for the 4% Rule.
Tax season never really ends, does it? With that in mind, our editors compiled this list of regulatory and legislative developments, tax issues, and other concerns that you and your clients will face.
This story wasn’t one of our most-read pieces, but it belongs on our list of important stories of the year. The investigative report from Financial Planning senior editor Ann Marsh showed what happened to whistleblower Johnny Burris when he complained to JPMorgan Chase, his employer at the time, after he believed he was being forced into steering clients into its own funds rather than the funds Burris believed were better for them.
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