Is "Smart Money" Really that Smart?

Ask ten people if they think they're a good driver, and I'm willing to bet that most, if not all of them, will claim to belong to that camp. The other guy or gal is the bad driver, not me. But someone is causing all of those car accidents and traffic snarl-ups, so we can't all be considered good drivers.

The same can be said about investors. We often hear financial pundits on TV talking about what the “Smart Money” is doing. Who are these smart people? What makes them so smart? And if they are smart, what are we? I won't keep you in suspense: yes, you might be considered "dumb money".

Defining “Smart Money”

Terms that Wall Street throw around such as “smart money” and “expert” can sound very alluring to us. Before we jump and listen to what they have to say, we should first find out more about what makes them so smart or deemed an expert. The truth is there is no standard definition.

In all my years in the industry, I still don’t know what makes someone a media proclaimed “expert” or “smart”. Based on my experience, an expert is someone who makes confident predictions and is right only about half the time. “Smart money” generally refers to a person/institution with a lot of money, but it can also be used to describe people who run complex investment schemes (so complex that we common folk can’t understand it).

Forget Smart Money; Be a Smart Investor

Historically, “Smart Money” has not translated into outsized returns. Their returns are often in line with straightforward (not complex) investment strategies. In fact, the Barron’s Roundtable of Smart Money in 2018 handily underperformed the markets (and that was not an anomaly).

Wall Street Journal personal finance writer Jason Zweig recently opined, “the only smart money is the money that knows its own limitations.”

Legendary investor Warren Buffett said, “What counts for most people in investing is not how much they know, but rather how realistically they define what they don’t know.”

As Zweig writes, it's surprisingly easy to find instances where smart money managers can sometimes behave just as irrationally as individual investors who chase prices up to parabolic levels, and join in the panic at the lows. They are, after all, humans just like us, subject to the laws of fear and greed innate in all of us.

Let’s not forget that professional hedge-fund analysts, fund-of-fund managers and other such purportedly expert advisers, put thousands of investors into Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. They ultimately lost millions of dollars of clients' money.

Another example: among the eager clients of the Foundation for New Era Philanthropy, one of the most notorious fraudulent investment schemes of the 1990s, were such billionaires and philanthropist as Laurance Rockefeller, former Goldman Sachs co-chairman John C. Whitehead and ex-U.S. Treasury Secretary William E. Simon.

Smart investors recognize that it’s OK they don’t know everything. And neither do the “smart money” nor the so called “experts”. Once we define the limits of our knowledge and understanding, we can focus our time and energy on what matters most – those things we can control.

As investors, we can control our decisions and reactions to uncontrollable market events. Following a disciplined and deliberate decision-making process is one of the smartest things investors can do. Working with a fee-only advisor can not only help you sort through all of the investment options and risks, but can also keep you from panicking at the lows, and feeling overly euphoric at the top.

If you would like to review your current investment portfolio or discuss any other financial planning matters, please don’t hesitate to contact us or visit our website at http://www.ydfs.com. We are a fee-only fiduciary financial planning firm that always puts your interests first.  If you are not a client yet, an initial consultation is complimentary and there is never any pressure or hidden sales pitch. We start with a specific assessment of your personal situation. There is no rush and no cookie-cutter approach. Each client is different, and so is your financial plan and investment objectives.

Source: (c) 2019 The Behavioral Finance Network, used with Permission

Second Quarter 2018 YDFS Market Review

I often remind my clients and prospects that judging market performance for periods shorter than a few years, isn’t very helpful. Market returns are simply random over relatively brief periods. However, over longer periods, such as five years, stocks are almost always profitable and offer very good performance. The S&P 500 has finished higher in 91% of the rolling-five-year periods over the last 50 years.

Nonetheless, it's helpful to check back and see how well the markets performed over the past quarter  While the U.S. equity markets suffered a small setback in the first quarter of 2018, the second quarter brought us back into positive territory.

The Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index—the broadest measure of U.S. stocks—finished the quarter up 3.83%, and is now in positive territory for the first half of the year, at +3.04%. The comparable Russell 3000 index is up 3.22% so far this year.

Large cap stocks more than recovered their earlier losses. The Wilshire U.S. Large Cap index gained 3.41% over the past three months, to finish up 2.62% for the first half of the year, while the Russell 1000 large-cap index stands at a 2.85% gain at the year’s halfway point. The widely-quoted S&P 500 index of large company stocks gained 2.93% in value during the year’s second quarter, rallying to a 1.67% gain so far in 2018.

Meanwhile, the Russell Midcap Index is up 2.35% in the first six months of the year.

As measured by the Wilshire U.S. Small-Cap index, investors in smaller companies posted a 7.87% gain over the second three months of the year, and now stand up 7.08% at the half-year mark. The comparable Russell 2000 Small-Cap Index is up 7.66% for the year. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index finished the quarter with a gain of 6.31%, and is now up 8.79% at the halfway point of 2018. Much of the over-performance of the NASDAQ can be attributed to a handful of stocks such as Amazon, Facebook, Google and Neflix.

International stocks are not faring quite so well. The broad-based MSCI EAFE index of companies in developed foreign economies lost 2.34% in the recent quarter, and is now down 4.49% for the year. In aggregate, European stocks were down 2.74% over the last three months, posting an overall loss of 5.23% for the year, while MSCI’s EAFE’s Far East Index lost 3.24% in the second quarter, down 3.33% so far in 2018. Emerging market stocks of less developed countries, as represented by the MSCI EAFE EM index, went into negative territory for the quarter, down 8.66%, for a loss of 7.68% for the year.

Looking over the other investment categories, real estate, as measured by the Wilshire U.S. REIT index, gained 9.73% during the year’s second quarter, and is just eking out a 1.52% gain for the year. The S&P GSCI index, which measures commodities returns, gained 8.00% in the second quarter, up 10.36% for the year, mainly due to the rising price of oil.

In the bond markets, coupon rates on 10-year Treasury bonds have continued an incremental rise to 2.86%, while 30-year government bond yields have risen slightly to 2.99%. Five-year municipal bonds are yielding, on average, 2.00% a year, while 30-year munis are yielding 3.00% on average. Simply put, at present, investing in bonds with a term greater than 10 years is not rewarding you for the many years of interest rate risk you're taking. That may change.

So what’s going on? There appear to be several forces fighting for control over the investment markets. The current bull market started in March of 2009, and seemed to be running out of steam in the first quarter, before a sugar high—the stimulus provided by the recent tax bill—kicked in for companies that have traditionally experienced higher tax rates. This pushed a tired bull market forward for another quarter, and could do the same for the remainder of the year. A fiscal stimulus in the ninth year of an economic expansion is almost unheard of, but it is clearly having a positive effect: economic activity was up nearly 5% in the second quarter, unemployment has continued a downward trend that really started at the beginning of the bull market, and corporate earnings—with the lower corporate taxes factored in—are projected to increase roughly 25% over last year.

The other contestants for control of the economy seem destined to lose this year and possibly start winning in 2019. The Federal Reserve Board has raised short-term interest rates once again, and has announced plans to continue in September, December, next March and next June. Bonds' share of investors' dollars at some point will overtake stocks as government 10 year bond yields reach 4% or more, making it difficult for stocks to levitate at current levels.

Meanwhile, the labor markets are so tight that there are more jobs available than workers to fill them. Won’t this eventually force companies to share their profits in the form of higher salaries? And there are potential problems with the escalating trade war that America has picked with its trading partners that will almost certainly not have a positive impact in the long term.

Bigger picture, the flattening yield curve—where longer-term bonds are closer to yielding what shorter-term instruments are paying—is never regarded as a good sign for an economy’s near-term future. It’s worth noting that the financial sector—that is, lending institutions—was one of the economic sectors to experience a loss. Banks borrow short and lend long, and there isn’t much profit in that activity when the rates are about equal.

Beyond that, in a good year, corporate earnings would grow around 5%, so one could argue that the economy is now experiencing five years of earnings growth. Add these factors to the doddering age of the current bull market, and you have to wonder how long the party can continue. Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring, but everybody knows that bull (up-trending) markets don’t last forever. This may be a good time to mentally and financially prepare for an end to the long bull run, and to hope it ends gracefully. For our clients, we remain cautious bulls and are keeping our hedges in place. The higher volatility we've experienced so far this year shows no sign of waning, and the low-volume summer trading season is the ideal time for market shenanigans to show up.

If you would like to review your current investment portfolio or discuss any other financial planning matters, please don’t hesitate to contact us or visit our website at http://www.ydfs.com. We are a fee-only fiduciary financial planning firm that always puts your interests first. If you are not a client yet, an initial consultation is complimentary and there is never any pressure or hidden sales pitch. We start with a specific assessment of your personal situation. There is no rush and no cookie-cutter approach. Each client is different, and so is your financial plan and investment objectives.

Sources:

Wilshire index data: http://www.wilshire.com/Indexes/calculator/

Russell index data: http://www.ftse.com/products/indices/russell-us

S&P index data: http://www.standardandpoors.com/indices/sp-500/en/us/?indexId=spusa-500-usduf--p-us-l--

Nasdaq index data: http://quotes.morningstar.com/indexquote/quote.html?t=COMP

http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/indices/nasdaq-total-returns.aspx

International indices: https://www.msci.com/end-of-day-data-search

Commodities index data: http://us.spindices.com/index-family/commodities/sp-gsci

Treasury market rates: http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates-bonds/government-bonds/us/

Bond rates: http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates-bonds/corporate-bonds/

General: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/stocks-see-broad-gains-in-the-second-quarter-but-not-without-turbulence-2018-06-29
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/08/gdp-for-second-quarter-on-track-to-double-2018-full-year-pace-of-2017.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jobs-report-4th-july-need-know-week-ahead-191630507.html

The MoneyGeek thanks guest writer Bob Veres for his contribution to this post

10 Investment Mistakes to Avoid

There are many ways to lose money while investing your money. Here's a look at 10 proven ways to manage your stock portfolio into the ground in no time.

The temptation to sell is always highest when the market drops the furthest.

Who needs a pyramid scheme or a crooked money manager when you can lose money in the stock market all by yourself? If you want to help curb your loss potential, avoid these 10 strategies:

1. Go with the herd. If everyone else is buying it, it must be good, right? Wrong. Investors tend to do what everyone else is doing and are overly optimistic when the market goes up and overly pessimistic when the market goes down. For instance, in 2008, the largest monthly outflow of U.S. domestic equity funds occurred after the market had fallen over 25% from its peak. And in 2011, the only time net inflows were recorded was before the market had slid over 10%.
2. Put all of your bets on one high-flying stock. If only you had invested all your money in Apple ten years ago, you'd be a millionaire today. Perhaps, but what if, instead, you had invested in Enron, Conseco, CIT, WorldCom, Washington Mutual, or Lehman Brothers? All were high flyers at one point, yet all have since filed for bankruptcy, making them perfect candidates for the downwardly mobile investor.
3. Buy only when the market is up. If the market is on a tear, how can you lose? Just ask the hordes of investors who flocked to stocks in 1999 and early 2000—and then lost their shirts in the ensuing bear market.
4. Sell when the market is down. The temptation to sell is always highest when the market drops the furthest. And it's what many inexperienced investors tend to do, locking in losses and precluding future recoveries.
5. Stay on the sidelines until markets calm down. Since markets almost never "calm down," this is the perfect rationale to never get in. In today's world, that means settling for a miniscule return that may not even keep pace with inflation.
6. Buy on tips from friends. Who needs professional advice when your new buddy from the gym can give you some great tips? If his stock suggestions are as good as his abs workout tips, you can't go wrong.
7. Rely on the pundits for advice. With all the experts out there crowding the airwaves with their recommendations, why not take their advice? But which advice should you follow? Jim Cramer may say buy, while Warren Buffett says sell. Does their time frame and risk tolerance even come close to yours? How would you know? Remember that what pundits sell best is themselves.
8. Go with your gut. Fundamental research may be OK for the pros, but it's much easier to buy or sell based on what your gut tells you. Had problems with your laptop lately? Maybe you should sell that Hewlett Packard stock. When it comes to hunches, irrationality rules.
9. React frequently to market volatility. Responding to the market's daily ups and downs is a surefire way to lock in losses. Even professional traders have a poor track record of guessing the market's bigger shifts, let alone daily fluctuations. Market volatility is a good teacher of bad short-term investing habits. Refuse to be a student.
10. Set it and forget it. Ignoring your portfolio until you're ready to cash it in gives it the perfect opportunity to go completely out of balance, with past winners dominating. It also makes for a major misalignment of original investing goals and shifting life-stage priorities. Instead, re-balance your portfolio on a regular basis and keep cash available so you can buy when others are panicking.  Ignoring your quarterly statements definitely won't improve your investment performance.

If you would like to review your current investment portfolio or discuss any other financial planning matters, please don’t hesitate to contact us or visit our website at http://www.ydfs.com. We are a fee-only fiduciary financial planning firm that always puts your interests first.  If you are not a client yet, an initial consultation is complimentary and there is never any pressure or hidden sales pitch. We start with a specific assessment of your personal situation. There is no rush and no cookie-cutter approach. Each client is different, and so is your financial plan and investment objectives.

Sources:

ICI; Standard & Poor's. The stock market is represented by the S&P 500, an unmanaged index considered representative of large-cap U.S. stocks. These hypothetical examples are for illustrative purposes only, and are not intended as investment advice.

How to Find an Old 401(k) Account

Here's the scenario: You worked for a company sometime in the past and contributed to the 401(k) or 403(b) plan.  When you left the company, you left the funds in the plan, forgot about it, but recently came across an old statement. Excited, you call the plan administrator, assuming that you can figure out who the current administrator is. You're lucky enough to reach someone and are told that the company’s accounts had been transferred to another plan administrator years ago. You then call the new administrator and are told they also could not find your 401(k) using your social security number or other identifying information. How do you proceed?  What are your options?

A recent Q&A by personal finance columnist Liz Weston tackles this very question.

First off, prepare to make a lot more phone calls.

There’s no central repository for missing 401(k) funds — at least not yet. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which safeguards traditional pensions, has proposed rules that would allow it to hold orphaned 401(k) money from plans that have closed. However, that won't start until 2018. Another proposal, by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), would direct the IRS to set up an online database so workers could find pension and 401(k) benefits from open or closed plans, but Congress has yet to take action on that.

If your balance was less than $5,000 (or was more than that when you left your employer, but the funds somehow declined below that balance due to market performance or fees), your employer could have approved a forced IRA transfer, and the money could be sitting with a financial services firm that accepts small accounts. If the plan was closed and your employer couldn’t find you, the money could have been transferred to an IRA, a bank account or a state escheat office. You can check state escheat offices at Unclaimed.org, the official site of the National Assn. of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA). NAUPA also endorses the site MissingMoney.com.  Searching for an IRA or bank account may require some additional help.

If your employer still exists, call to find out if anyone knows what happened to your money. If the company is out of business, you may be able to get free help tracking down your money from the U.S. Department of Labor (at askebsa.dol.gov or (866) 444-3272) or from the Pension Rights Center, a nonprofit pension counseling center (pensionrights.org/find-help).  Another place to check is the National Registry of Unclaimed Retirement Benefits, a subsidiary of a private company, called PenChecks, that processes retirement checks, at www.unclaimedretirementbenefits.com.

Your employer or a plan administrator could insist that you cashed in your account at some point. You may be able to prove otherwise if you’ve kept old tax returns, since those typically would show any distributions. Ultimately, you may have to seek legal help if you're sure that your money is out there somewhere and you're not getting any results.

If you do find your money, understand that you may still have missed out on a lot of growth. Your investments may have been converted to cash, which has earned next to nothing over the past decade or so, particularly after inflation.

Leaving a 401(k) account in an old employer’s plan can be a convenient option, but only if you’re willing to keep track of the money — and let the administrator know each time you change your address. Your retirement success depends on it.

This shows why it’s important not to lose track of old retirement accounts. Ultimately, your current employer may allow you to transfer old accounts into its plan, or, more preferable, you can roll the money into an IRA. Either way, it’s much better to keep on top of your retirement money than to try to find it years later.

If you would like to review your current investment portfolio or discuss any other financial planning matters, please don’t hesitate to contact us or visit our website at http://www.ydfs.com. We are a fee-only fiduciary financial planning firm that always puts your interests first.  If you are not a client yet, an initial consultation is complimentary and there is never any pressure or hidden sales pitch. We start with a specific assessment of your personal situation. There is no rush and no cookie-cutter approach. Each client is different, and so is your financial plan and investment objectives.

Source: How to track down an old retirement account by Liz Weston

Regulators to the Rescue?

By now, some of you have received one or more notices from your broker or custodian about changes to your chosen money market fund. What do these changes mean to you?

The world of money market funds changed forever back in 2008, when an investment vehicle called the Reserve Primary Fund loaded up on loan obligations backed by Lehman Brothers.  Lehman famously went under, and the fund “broke the buck,” meaning that when Lehman was unable to pay back its loans, the value of a share of the Reserve Primary Fund dipped under $1. 

This was the first time many investors realized that money market funds were not risk-free.  Many panicked, causing a run on other money market instruments, and overall the event added another unhappy twist to the financial crisis.

Fast forward to the near future: October 14, 2016, the date when new protective regulations implemented by the Securities and Exchange Commission, will go into effect.  Yes, the government wheels creak along that slowly.

What regulations?  To make sure that the funds are able to redeem at par ($1 per share), all money market instruments that invest in taxable corporate debt or municipal bonds, and have institutional investors, will have to keep at least 10% of their assets either in cash, U.S. Treasury securities or other securities that will convert to cash within one day (many money market funds make overnight loans to lending institutions in the U.S. and Europe.)

As further safeguards, at least 30% of a money market fund’s assets will have to be liquid within one week, and funds will be restricted from investing more than 3% of their assets in lower-quality second-tier securities.  No more than one-half of one percent of their assets can be invested in second-tier securities issued by any single issuer.  Finally, money market funds will not be allowed to buy second-tier securities that mature in more than 45 days.

What happens if all these safeguards don’t work, and a share of the money market fund still goes below $1?  In those (probably rare) instances, the fund’s board of directors are permitted to suspend your ability to redeem your investment for up to ten days, and under certain circumstances, they may impose a 1% or 2% fee on your redemptions. That’s pretty steep, considering that you’re probably currently receiving less than a 1% return on your money market funds.

The bottom line is that investors will still be able to put $1 into a money market fund and expect to get $1 back out again when they sell shares—with, perhaps, a tiny bit more confidence a few months from now. Just don’t expect these money market funds to keep up with the pace of inflation.

If you would like to review your current investment portfolio or discuss any other financial planning matters, please don’t hesitate to contact us or visit our website at http://www.ydfs.com. We are a fee-only fiduciary financial planning firm that always puts your interests first.  If you are not a client yet, an initial consultation is complimentary and there is never any pressure or hidden sales pitch. We start with a specific assessment of your personal situation. There is no rush and no cookie-cutter approach. Each client is different, and so is your financial plan and investment objectives.

Sources:
http://www.multnomahgroup.com/hubfs/PDF_Files/Webinar_Presentation_Slides/Money_Market_Mutual_Funds_Slides.pdf?t=1439394348032

http://www.bankrate.com/finance/investing/sec-new-rules-for-money-market-funds.aspx
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/07/23/s-e-c-approves-rules-on-money-market-funds/?_r=0

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/best-money-market-account/

http://www.bankrate.com/funnel/money-market-mutual-funds/money-market-mutual-fund-results.aspx?Taxable=true

The MoneyGeek thanks guest writer Bob Veres for his contribution to this post