Five years after the enactment of major retirement reform in the UK, the Association of British Insurers presents an evaluation. This podcast (7:05) notes that the reforms were intended to promote “pension freedom,” but the report is now pushing for the use of financial advice to keep people from misusing that freedom.

SA For FAs

Retirement Advisor: The 8% Rule

Mayport Wealth Management’s Adam Grossman offers an anatomy of the type of client reactions he’s seeing in the current market meltdown, along with analysis of value in the muni bond market and an incremental approach to stock-buying. In this podcast interview (17:53), the Boston-based advisor also offers insight into investment rules of thumb, his approach to helping clients clarify goals and his thoughts on correcting America’s dearth of retirement savings.

The Asset Allocator: Mayport’s Adam Grossman On Financial Advice In Exciting Times

In research on the end-of-life regrets of elderly Americans, the trip they did not take was one of the highest-ranked items. This podcast (5:34) suggests the extra time in quarantine with those closest to us can guide us to how we can achieve a more ideal retirement, one that more precisely defines which pursuits generate the greatest “happiness” returns.

Retirement Advisor: A More Ideal Retirement

I recall an incident where a senior analyst at a major investment research firm was “right” about the Fed – and took a maximalist position at least eight years too early in a career-ending move. This podcast (6:33) suggests investors determine their central tendency – towards fear or greed – and balance against it via asset allocation.

The Asset Allocator: Wrong For Too Long

CNBC ran an article a week ago arguing that the coronavirus should make people rethink the idea of retiring abroad based on the quality of overseas healthcare and the inability to get Medicare coverage. This podcast (6:31) suggests these two arguments are fairly easy to overcome, but that the true coronavirus critique of retirement abroad is that in the social distancing caused by this pandemic, many a family are drawing closer than ever before, something that international borders would block.

Retirement Advisor: Coronavirus Considerations

The Beatles’ classic ballad “Yesterday” offers some perspective on today’s falling markets. This podcast (6:08) takes comfort in the Beatles’ hint that the troubles that once seemed so far away only look as though they’re here to stay, and offers further thoughts about the British band’s strange notion that “yesterday came suddenly.”

The Asset Allocator: Do You Believe In Yesterday?

A novel piece of financial research put out by the Asian Development Bank seeks an explanation for an unexpected growing global demand for cash. The paper does not discuss retirement per se, but inspired thoughts of an advantageous approach for retirement savers. This podcast (6:41) argues that use of old-fashioned cash could discourage spending, serve as a budgetary monitoring tool and facilitate securities purchases at times like the present when stocks are falling.

Retirement Advisor: Countercultural Cash

The implicit timeline for most stock-market trades and most stock-market analysis is short-term, yet most investors’ personal timelines are long-term. A lot of stock-market analysis will therefore fail to satisfy investors’ personal questions. This podcast (6:22) suggests investors not overthink things. Accumulators of capital should buy. The current market crisis may well be the event whose importance to our future wealth we did not fully appreciate as it occurred.

The Asset Allocator: At What Price Do You Get In?

What would rekindle the aggressiveness of a 50-year-old in a 65-year-old investor? Ironically, adopting what is thought to be a highly conservative approach: annuitizing a portion of the portfolio. This podcast (6:50) argues that the “smell of death” consumers detect in annuities is really a function of feeling like they can never again take risk; yet a partial annuitization strategy can actually increase capacity to take risk.

Retirement Advisor: Unleashing Your Inner 50-Year-Old

If you’re an advisor getting lots of panicky phone calls or text messages, what should the approach to this quasi-gladiatorial contest between bulls and bears be? This podcast (6:22) suggests that Rudyard Kipling’s classic poem “If” provides the best advisor job-description at a time like this: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you...” Indeed, a key benefit of employing a financial advisor is to place an intermediary between the assets we want to protect and increase – and our itchy fingers reaching for the trade button.

The Asset Allocator: Keep Your Head When All About You Are Losing Theirs

The Center for Retirement Research reports a little-known demographic difficulty: the significant drop in 401(k) and IRA assets for “late boomers,” aged 55 to 65, beginning with the Great Recession. This podcast (6:49) explains the report’s findings and the researchers’ tentative conclusions, and adds some possible lines of further research inquiry. Overall, the unexpectedly sharp fall in retirement wealth for this cohort should strengthen our motivation to shift assets towards our future needs.

Retirement Advisor: Where Have The Late Boomers’ Retirement Gone?

New Dalbar research takes a look at asset protection strategies through the prism of opportunity cost, with a view toward lowering investors’ hedging costs or even increasing their total returns. This podcast (8:10) suggests that Dalbar’s alternative allocation findings are quite helpful, so long as advisors do the appropriate due diligence for their clients, but also proposes another strategy for Dalbar’s quants to test empirically.

The Asset Allocator: Dalbar Rethinks Asset Allocation

Roll Call reports that the Teamster’s largest fund is headed toward insolvency, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation fund that serves as its backstop is about four years from depletion. CNBC reports a closed Catholic hospital’s nearly 700 former employees may wind up with nothing from its insolvent pension. This podcast (6:51) suggests that people can survive portfolio depletion more easily than the drying up of lifetime income, and that advisors’ income plans must therefore specify how much their clients should save, what they can spend and when they can retire.

Retirement Advisor: Bad News, Good Guidance

The Wall Street Journal notes that investors have grouped around consumer staples amidst the big sell-off, for fear of an economic downturn. This podcast (7:00) suggests tweaking the consumer staples category, first to “sin” stocks, then to “comfort” stocks, to accent the more robustly selling products and services during downturns.

The Asset Allocator: Comfort Stocks

The retirement journey that people dream of is actually a sort of journey, one which they burden by overpacking. This podcast (5:27) suggests that it behooves investors to think about what they will “pack” for that retirement journey long before they’re going to take it; doing so may help frame decisions as to what they need today versus what they will need in retirement.

Retirement Advisor: Come On The Amazing Journey

SA For FAs delivers information and analysis that will help Financial Advisors throughout their day. The podcast, hosted by Seeking Alpha editor Gil Weinreich, addresses issues of current interest to Financial Advisors and active investors, including macro analysis of current issues affecting markets; retirement planning; and asset allocation strategy. The show is published twice a week and features occasional interviews with investors and experts in the field.

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SA For FAs

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