A wake up call for advisors — Turmoil at the top of the market

Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

“Once an acci­dent, twice a coin­ci­dence, three times a trend” is a rule of thumb among observers of polit­i­cal campaigns.

That’s why I was struck by arti­cles last week in the Globe and Mail, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

These arti­cles describe tur­moil among high-net worth investors  …. and have pro­found impli­ca­tions for finan­cial advisors.

Busi­ness Week

First came Busi­ness Week. A story in late June out­lined how the num­ber of afflu­ent Amer­i­cans look­ing to switch advi­sors has tripled in one year, lead­ing to a spike in investors seek­ing out sec­ond opin­ions. (Links to all of these sto­ries can be found at the bot­tom of this article.)

Many find this process excru­ci­at­ingly dif­fi­cult. “My plan­ner was a friend, a good guy …. but I had to stop the bleed­ing” said one investor who had moved. “It was almost like a breakup …. you know, I’ll take the dog, you take the sil­ver­ware.” Among the advice in the Busi­ness Week arti­cle was for investors to take any sec­ond opin­ion with a grain of salt and to work hard on the rela­tion­ship before split­ting, just as they would a marriage.

Wall Street Journal

Last Wednes­day, the Wall Street Jour­nal weighed in on how afflu­ent investors are shift­ing from Wall Street bro­ker­age firms to inde­pen­dent advi­sors using firms such as Charles Schwab, Fidelity and TD Amer­i­trade to pro­vide a back-office plat­form. The key attrac­tion behind the move: The per­cep­tion that inde­pen­dent advi­sors will be more objec­tive and more likely to put their inter­ests first.

The arti­cle talked about the fact that inde­pen­dents oper­at­ing as Reg­is­tered Inde­pen­dent Advi­sors are held to a “fidu­ciary” stan­dard in the advice they pro­vide, in which they are oblig­ated to oper­ate in clients’ best inter­ests; this is a higher level than bro­kers at Wall Street firms, who are guided by “suit­abil­ity rules” in which they are merely pro­hib­ited from rec­om­mend­ing inap­pro­pri­ate prod­ucts.  (The Obama admin­is­tra­tion has made noises about extend­ing the fidu­ciary stan­dard to all finan­cial advisors.)

Just as in Canada, Amer­i­can investors strug­gle with the “Who Can I Trust?” ques­tion, plagued by the lack of con­sis­tent reg­u­la­tory over­sight and the same alpha­bet soup of cre­den­tials we have here. A sign of the times, the article’s clos­ing piece of advice urged investors look­ing to move to hone in on poten­tial con­flicts of interest.

Globe and Mail

On Thurs­day, the Globe and Mail gave this a Cana­dian spin. In a front-page story in the Report on Busi­ness, it detailed how wealthy Cana­di­ans are rethink­ing rela­tion­ships that have some­times been decades in the mak­ing. It talked about the scrutiny that once-passive investors are bring­ing to the invest­ment philoso­phies guid­ing their port­fo­lios, the fees they’re pay­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion from their advi­sor. And it also pin­pointed the dra­matic spike in aggres­sive mar­ket­ing to high net worth clients by other advi­sors seek­ing their business.

New York Times

And on Fri­day of last week, the New York Times focused on a Price­wa­ter­house Coop­ers sur­vey of 238 pri­vate banks and wealth man­agers serv­ing clients with assets of $500,000 to $20 mil­lion.  The study high­lighted a huge gap in the train­ing, skills and tools that client rela­tion­ship man­agers are equipped with — dri­ven in large mea­sure by the pri­or­ity these firms give to attract­ing new clients as opposed to serv­ing exist­ing ones.

One con­sul­tant quoted in the story sum­ma­rized it this way: “In the past, peo­ple were incred­i­bly loyal to their advi­sors even through peri­ods of dis­sat­is­fac­tion. Today that’s changing.”

Given the level of para­noia that dom­i­nates the psy­che of many Amer­i­can investors in today’s post Mad­off world, more impor­tant than advi­sors’ brand, per­for­mance or pedi­gree is the level of trans­parency in how they do busi­ness and how they man­age clients’ money. “Even if you think you’ve found an advi­sor you can trust, check and check again” the arti­cle concludes.

A five point response

Among the fall­out from arti­cles such as those in Busi­ness Week, the Globe and Mail, New York Times and Wall Street Jour­nal will be an increase in the num­ber of clients explor­ing their options — some investors who have been on the fence will con­clude that if oth­ers are look­ing at mov­ing, per­haps they should as well.

In some cases, dis­il­lu­sioned investors are going the dis­count bro­ker route; over the past while the self-directed chan­nel has picked up sig­nif­i­cant share in both the U.S. and Canada.

More often, clients will be mov­ing to another advi­sor. Note that investors mak­ing a move will be ask­ing tougher ques­tions than in the past. A Globe and Mail col­umn in June set out a process that investors could use in select­ing an advi­sor, includ­ing ques­tions they might ask. One advi­sor used these ques­tions to his advan­tage. You can read more about this here:

Telling your story to prospects

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​190

In light of the increas­ing media cov­er­age on investor move­ment, you have two choices: You can fume about know-nothing jour­nal­ists, ungrate­ful clients and “media whore” advi­sors seek­ing out the lime­light. Or you can accept these arti­cles as real­ity and focus on the things under your control.

Since Jan­u­ary, I’ve been run­ning work­shops that have received the best response of any­thing I’ve done in twenty years work­ing with advi­sors. Here’s a five point strat­egy you might con­sider, draw­ing on ideas from those work­shops and bring­ing together some of the things I’ve been writ­ing about over the past year.

Step One: Revisit your value

In today’s value dri­ven world, Cana­di­ans are tak­ing a hard look at the value they get from every­one with whom they do business.

Like it or not, more and more investors will be push­ing hard to under­stand how much they’re pay­ing in fees and what they’re get­ting in return . This has already started at the top of mar­ket, as Invest­ment Coun­sel­lors charg­ing as lit­tle as half a per­cent annu­ally have forced some advi­sors to change the way they oper­ate in order to com­pete. Increas­ingly, the mar­ket is cap­ping fees for mil­lion dol­lar plus clients at one and a half per­cent or less.

His­tor­i­cally, some advi­sors have pro­moted their invest­ment and asset allo­ca­tion dis­ci­pline as their key point of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion — although for many, the last year’s events have called into ques­tion the abil­ity to define value in this fashion.

Another approach to value lies in the total wealth approach that more and more high end advi­sors are tak­ing. This was a recur­ring theme by speak­ers at last spring’s Top Advi­sor Summit.

Five take­aways for advisors

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​170

Still another exam­ple is the peace of mind and sense of con­trol that can come from a plan­ning approach, sum­ma­rized in this post from last fall:

Trans­lat­ing cri­sis into opportunity

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​107

Or per­haps you have gone the route of spe­cial­iza­tion and built expert knowl­edge in a nar­row prod­uct area or bring deep under­stand­ing and strong cre­den­tials in the needs of a defined niche market.

What­ever approach to value you offer, being able to clearly artic­u­late your value propo­si­tion and what clients get from work­ing with you will become the nec­es­sary cost of doing busi­ness going for­ward. Now’s the time to take a hard look at how you describe the value you bring.

Step Two: Start with defence.

Iden­tify your top clients, the ones most likely to be approached by com­peti­tors.   Think about when you last met and con­sider whether a meet­ing is overdue.

What hap­pens when you meet is key. In that meet­ing, you need to pro­vide per­spec­tive on what you’ve learned from the events of the past year, a point of view on where we are today and clear guid­ance on what clients should be doing going forward.

Many clients are look­ing for a depar­ture from the invest­ment approaches that failed them in the past year and have fre­quently led to dis­ap­point­ing returns over the past decade. Given that many investors are look­ing for changes from the sta­tus quo, focus on mod­i­fi­ca­tions in the strat­egy you’re rec­om­mend­ing.  Even say­ing some­thing like: “The core strat­egy we had a year ago still makes sense, but I’d like to talk about a few changes respond­ing to today’s mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties in invest­ment grade cor­po­rate bonds” will be well received by many clients.

If you’re advis­ing a stay the course approach, empha­size why it still makes sense and ensure clients under­stand the alter­na­tives you’ve con­sid­ered before arriv­ing at a do-nothing recommendation.

When you meet, make it a pri­or­ity to dig deep for how clients really feel and focus on hear­ing them out. A recent arti­cle out­lined five steps to an effec­tive meet­ing, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on get­ting clients engaged in meetings.

Five steps to high-impact meetings

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​148

Even if you haven’t con­ducted a for­mal client sur­vey, con­sider ask­ing key clients to com­plete a short report card  before the meet­ing and use that as a jump­ing off point for your conversation.

And here’s a com­fort­able way for clients to tell you how they really feel:                                                                             

Get­ting a read­ing on where you stand

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​167

Step Three: Make trust your top priority

At one time, trust was given by clients — increas­ingly today it’s earned.

Rec­og­nize that rebuild­ing client trust is your num­ber one pri­or­ity — ero­sion of trust is a can­cer that inevitably under­mines your relationship.

Research by con­sul­tant Charles Green has iden­ti­fied four dri­vers of trust  — cred­i­bil­ity, reli­a­bil­ity, inti­macy and client  focus. For strate­gies on build­ing trust, take a look at his http://​www​.trustedad​vi​sor​.com/ web­site — you can also read more about rebuild­ing trust below.

Rebuild­ing trust — today’s #1 client challenge

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​172

Step Four: Tackle per­ceived con­flicts head-on

Investors today are para­noid about con­flicts of inter­est — in many cases the pen­du­lum has swung from indif­fer­ence about con­flicts to fix­a­tion on them.

Con­sider pub­lish­ing a code of con­duct and shar­ing that with clients; this was an idea pro­filed in this post by a U.S. indus­try insider pub­lished ear­lier this year.

The case for an advi­sor code of conduct

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​153

And think about being proac­tive in embrac­ing a “fidu­ciary approach”, in which you com­mit to tak­ing the ini­tia­tive in dis­clos­ing poten­tial con­flicts and putting client inter­ests first in every­thing you do. At one time, advi­sors would have been con­cerned that talk­ing about a fidu­ciary approach would cre­ate sus­pi­cion among clients and raise con­cerns where none existed; in today’s hyper-vigilant world, we need to pre-empt the con­cerns that may be weigh­ing on clients but that they aren’t com­fort­able raising.

Step Five: Shift to offence

No mat­ter how good a job you do, today’s real­ity is that you will inevitably lose some clients.

You need to put steps in place to replace them. Start by carv­ing out a reg­u­lar time block in your sched­ule — say two ninety minute peri­ods each week, dur­ing which you focus on one prospect­ing strategy.

You could use that time to meet with pro­fes­sional advi­sors of exist­ing clients. Or sys­tem­at­i­cally reach out to peo­ple you know, offer­ing to send them the arti­cles you email clients, with the goal of increas­ing the num­ber of prospec­tive clients in your pipeline.

Alter­na­tively, you could focus on client devel­op­ment via the client sand­wich lunch ini­tia­tive out­lined in this arti­cle and free one hour webinar:

Get­ting client devel­op­ment into first gear

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​164

Free webi­nar: Build­ing a client lunch prospect­ing program

http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​180

Or you could seize on oppor­tu­ni­ties to posi­tion your­self as to the go-to resource for peo­ple who face cor­po­rate down­siz­ing; this was the topic of my August col­umn in Invest­ment Executive:

Turn­ing down­siz­ing into prospect­ing success

http://​invest​mentex​ec​u​tive​.news​pa​perdi​rect​.com/​e​p​a​p​e​r​/​v​i​e​w​e​r​.​a​spx

And don’t ignore plant­ing refer­ral seeds when meet­ing with clients. If you’re unsure about how to raise the topic of refer­rals, try this at the end of a meet­ing: “In the next twelve months, I have the capac­ity to take on 10 new clients. I have recently iden­ti­fied the pro­file of the clients I find I can help the most and work with the best — a pro­file that you fit almost exactly, by the way. I won­der if I could take two min­utes to walk you through the qual­i­ties of the clients I work with best, in case you’re talk­ing to a friend who is con­sid­er­ing mak­ing a change.”

In Sum­mary

The four arti­cles that appeared recently and oth­ers like them are a wakeup call for advi­sors. The only ques­tion is whether you answer that call or press the snooze button.

If you decide to respond, sched­ule some time in your cal­en­dar right now, per­haps along with your team or col­leagues. In that time slot, you might go through this arti­cle in detail and pick one or two areas to focus on in the period ahead, clearly defin­ing the steps you need to take in the next 30 days.

Just remem­ber:  Advi­sors are no dif­fer­ent than automak­ers or retail­ers. Those who embrace fun­da­men­tal change in response to an altered com­pet­i­tive land­scape and shift­ing cus­tomer real­ity can posi­tion them­selves for future suc­cess. Those who fail to do so risk being left in the dust.

P.S. For those who want to send this arti­cle to a team mem­ber or col­league, note that the email for­ward­ing sys­tem on the plat­form for this blog has devel­oped a glitch.

Copy and send this link instead:                                                                                                                                                           

To for­ward this arti­cle: http://​www​.strate​gicim​per​a​tives​.ca/​b​l​o​g​/​?​p​=​198

Links to articles:

Busi­ness Week — June 25 Think­ing of Switch­ing Finan­cial Planners?

Wall Street Jour­nal — July 29 WSJ​.com — Wary Investors Are Seek­ing Out Objec­tive Voices

Globe and Mail Report on Busi­ness — July 30  “Woo­ing the Wealthy” <http://​www​.globein​vestor​.com/​s​e​r​v​l​e​t​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​G​A​M​.​2​0​0​9​0​7​3​0​.​R​H​I​G​H​N​E​T​W​O​R​T​H​3​0​A​R​T​1​9​4​4​/​G​I​S​t​o​r​y​/​E​m​ail>

New York Times — Aug 1 Wealth Mat­ters:  In Search of Com­pe­tent (and Hon­est) Finan­cial Advisers

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Tags: Affluent Americans, Brokerage Firms, Business Week Article, Charles Schwab, Financial Advisors, Globe And Mail, Globe Mail, Grain Of Salt, High Net Worth Investors, Independent Advisors, Independents, New York Times, Obama, Political Campaigns, Profound Implications, Rule Of Thumb, Second Opinion, Silverware, Wake Up Call, Wall Street Journal
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How a simple email could save a client

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

A cou­ple of weeks back I had a con­ver­sa­tion that got me thinking.

Some friends had invited me over to join them for a casual din­ner party. As it hap­pens, the guy who was sit­ting beside me rec­og­nized me from my col­umn in the Globe and Mail and in short order asked for advice.

“My wife and I have been talk­ing about the pos­si­bil­ity of chang­ing our stock­bro­ker,” he said. “I won­der whether you could sug­gest a cou­ple of bro­kers we could talk to.”

The roots of dissatisfaction

I answered that there were obvi­ously lots of alter­na­tives depend­ing on what he and his wife were look­ing for, and how much they had to invest. Before going fur­ther, I asked him to tell me more about his cur­rent advisor.

“We’ve been work­ing with this woman for about five years,” he said “and in most respects we’re not unhappy with her. Before start­ing with her, I’d been man­ag­ing our own money. She helped us develop a bit of a plan; when­ever we call she gets back quickly, and when we fin­ish our annual meet­ing to make sure we’re on track both my wife and I walk away feel­ing our time has been well spent.”

“All of that said, I think we may need some­one who’s more on top of what’s hap­pen­ing in mar­kets and who’s more proac­tive in man­ag­ing our port­fo­lio. We don’t get much in the way of infor­ma­tion from her between meet­ings, aside from the generic quar­terly newslet­ter that her firm sends which is gen­er­ally a waste of time.”

“And, when we do meet all she says is that we have lots of time, to stay the course and we’ll be fine. That may be true, but I really won­der how on top of mar­kets she really is; and whether we’d be bet­ter off work­ing with some­one who is more proac­tive in iden­ti­fy­ing bet­ter opportunities.”

Today’s desire for change

After hear­ing him out, I sug­gested that before look­ing at alter­na­tives, he and his wife should sit down and talk to their advi­sor and air their con­cerns. I haven’t heard from him since our con­ver­sa­tion, so per­haps they’ve had that dis­cus­sion and cleared the air. Or maybe this investor got busy, as all of us do and he never fol­lowed up with his advi­sor and is now vul­ner­a­ble to the next advi­sor who approaches him.

Advi­sors read­ing this may shake their heads about how fickle and unrea­son­able clients are. And cer­tainly, there are clients who are irrational.

Look at this how­ever, from the investor’s point of view. Given the mar­ket tur­moil of the past four years, many investors take the view that if they haven’t seen rec­om­men­da­tions for changes in their port­fo­lios, it is lack of inter­est or effort on their advisor’s part. In today’s envi­ron­ment, even investors with a long term view want to feel that their invest­ments are being actively man­aged. That doesn’t mean you rec­om­mend changes for the sake of changes; but every­thing being equal, investors want to feel that their advi­sor is on the look­out for ways to improve their portfolio.

Cer­tainly, you can rec­om­mend that investors main­tain the sta­tus quo. Just under­stand that today you have to work harder to get clients to buy into that sta­tus quo mind­set than to make changes. If you’re rec­om­mend­ing no changes in a port­fo­lio you need to demon­strate the alter­na­tives you’ve looked at and to explain why main­tain­ing their port­fo­lio as is makes sense.

Com­mu­ni­cat­ing that you’re on top of markets

A related issue is let­ting clients know that you’re on top of what’s hap­pen­ing in mar­kets. Regret­tably, in today’s cyn­i­cal and skep­ti­cal world if you don’t let clients know the kinds of things you do to stay abreast of mar­ket devel­op­ments some will con­clude the worst, and assume that you’re not invest­ing the time to stay informed.

This isn’t true of all clients of course, but it does apply to a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber. That’s why you need to let clients know what you’re doing to ensure you’re pro­vid­ing the best pos­si­ble advice.

So if you’re going to a con­fer­ence, con­sider send­ing clients a short note sum­ma­riz­ing the speak­ers you heard and the key mes­sages you walked away with.

Another alter­na­tive is to send clients a monthly email with a link to one arti­cle or video that illus­trates the sources you tap into as part of your ongo­ing research. The key is to have that arti­cle come from a cred­i­ble source; The Econ­o­mist, Finan­cial Times, For­tune, Forbes, New York Times and Bloomberg Busi­ness Week are exam­ples of sources that inspire con­fi­dence among clients.
In the per­fect world, clients would trust us fully and we wouldn’t have to go to the effort of demon­strat­ing what our efforts are on their behalf. And while that’s cer­tainly true of some clients, a grow­ing num­ber want the reas­sur­ance of know­ing that their advi­sor is on top of impor­tant devel­op­ments. That monthly email with an arti­cle from Forbes or the New York Times could be one of your invest­ments in rein­forc­ing client con­fi­dence that they’re work­ing with the right advisor.

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Tags: Annual Meeting, Casual Dinner, Desire, Dinner Party, Dissatisfaction, Email Client, Globe And Mail, Money, Quarterly Newsletter, Respects, Roots, Stockbroker, Waste Of Time
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The Key to Outstanding Client Relationships

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Lots has been writ­ten about what advi­sors can do to cre­ate out­stand­ing client relationships.

What’s often missed is the role that clients them­selves play – quite sim­ply, there are some clients whose mind­set and behav­iour make a deep bond impos­si­ble. In many regards, it’s clients them­selves that more than any other sin­gle fac­tor deter­mine whether a strong con­nec­tion is possible.

The fact is that advi­sors aren’t pow­er­less vic­tims when it comes to the clients you deal with – advi­sors do have a choice on this matter.

In August, a col­umn in the Globe and Mail out­lined seven attrib­utes that investors can bring to the rela­tion­ship with an advi­sor that allow an advi­sor to work more effec­tively and max­i­mize the value those investors get.

While writ­ten for investors, this col­umn also offers use­ful guide­lines for advi­sors when talk­ing to prospec­tive clients.  A pre­vi­ous Globe col­umn out­lined guide­lines for investors seek­ing a new advi­sor, sug­gest­ing that investors write down the key things they’re look­ing for before meet­ing with a poten­tial advisor.

Advi­sors should do the same – while you might still choose to work with a new client who doesn’t meet all your cri­te­ria, it’s nev­er­the­less worth­while to iden­tify the impor­tant things you’re look­ing for in a new client – and the deal­break­ers that might cause you to take a pass.

Finally, please note that the seven attrib­utes in this col­umn won’t be a fit for every advi­sor – they may be a start­ing point, but to be effec­tive you have to take the time to iden­tify the qual­i­ties in a new client that apply to you.

http://​www​.the​globe​and​mail​.com/​g​l​o​b​e​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​o​r​/​i​n​v​e​s​t​m​e​n​t​-​i​d​e​a​s​/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​s​/​e​x​p​e​r​t​s​-​p​o​d​i​u​m​/​h​o​w​-​t​o​-​g​e​t​-​t​h​e​-​m​o​s​t​-​f​r​o​m​-​y​o​u​r​-​f​i​n​a​n​c​i​a​l​-​a​d​v​i​s​e​r​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​1​2​6​1​9​51/

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Tags: Attributes, Client Relationships, Financial Adviser, Globe And Mail, Globe Investor, Globe Mail, Important Things, Investment Ideas, Investor Investment, Investors, Mindset, Podium, Powerless Victims, Prospective Clients, Relationship
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Essential Insights to Share with Clients

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

As Euro­pean debt woes con­tinue to dom­i­nate head­lines, it’s hard for this not to have an impact on our mood and our out­look. That’s true of us and it’s equally true of our clients.

It’s in times like these that investors look to their advi­sors for guid­ance and direc­tion. Note that if clients don’t get this from you, they’ll get that guid­ance else­where; whether from friends, rel­a­tives or self-appointed invest­ment gurus on tele­vi­sion or in newspapers.

That’s why it’s essen­tial for advi­sors to be proac­tive in pro­vid­ing clients with con­text on the cur­rent issues. In doing so you’ve got to deal with two time­frames; the imme­di­ate sit­u­a­tion as well as the longer term outlook.

Recently, I came across a cou­ple of highly cred­i­ble and insight­ful per­spec­tives that paint a daunt­ing pic­ture for the near term, and a more pos­i­tive prospect for mid and long term global growth. Today’s arti­cle focuses on near-term; Monday’s arti­cle will talk about the mid-term outlook.

“The best speech in a very long time”

Even though advi­sors preach a long term focus, the real­ity is that in times like these, the imme­di­ate time­frame is what dom­i­nates many clients’ thinking.

That’s why a Decem­ber 12 speech by Bank of Canada Gov­er­nor Mark Car­ney is essen­tial read­ing. This talk was cited by the Globe and Mail’s Jef­frey Simp­son as “a dis­course so intel­li­gent in its analy­sis and per­cep­tive in its rec­om­men­da­tions that it stands as the best speech by any pub­lic fig­ure in Ottawa in a very, very long time.”

Titled Growth in an Age of Delever­ag­ing, Car­ney pulled few punches in lay­ing out the back­ground to today’s issues in blunt lan­guage not usu­ally asso­ci­ated with cen­tral bankers.

Note that to pro­vide a good flavour of Carney’s remarks, today’s arti­cle is longer than the norm. Some of his com­ments follow:

The end of the debt super cycle and a new era of delever­ag­ing

• Advanced economies have steadily increased lever­age for decades. That era is now deci­sively over. The direc­tion may be clear, but the mag­ni­tude and abrupt­ness of the process are not. It could be long and orderly or it could be sharp and chaotic. How we man­age it will do much to deter­mine our rel­a­tive prosperity.

• Accu­mu­lat­ing the moun­tain of debt now weigh­ing on advanced economies has been the work of a gen­er­a­tion. Across G-7 coun­tries, total non-financial debt has dou­bled since 1980 to 300 per cent of GDP. Global pub­lic debt to global GDP is almost at 80 per cent, equiv­a­lent to lev­els that have his­tor­i­cally been asso­ci­ated with wide­spread sov­er­eign defaults.

• As a result of delever­ag­ing, the global econ­omy risks enter­ing a pro­longed period of defi­cient demand. If mis­han­dled, it could lead to debt defla­tion and dis­or­derly defaults, poten­tially trig­ger­ing large trans­fers of wealth and social unrest.

Big chal­lenges for Europe

• In Europe, a renewed cri­sis is under­way. An increas­ing num­ber of coun­tries are being forced to pay unsus­tain­able rates on their bor­row­ings. With a vicious delever­ag­ing process tak­ing hold in its bank­ing sec­tor, the euro area is sink­ing into reces­sion. Given ties of trade, finance and con­fi­dence, the rest of the world is begin­ning to feel the effects.

• Debt tol­er­ance has deci­sively turned. The ini­tially well-founded opti­mism that launched the decades-long credit boom has given way to a belated pes­simism that seeks to reverse it.

• In Europe, a tough com­bi­na­tion of nec­es­sary fis­cal aus­ter­ity and struc­tural adjust­ment will mean falling wages, high unem­ploy­ment and tight credit con­di­tions for firms. Europe is unlikely to return to its pre-crisis level of GDP until a full five years after the start of its last recession.

• In most of Europe today, fur­ther stim­u­lus is no longer an option, with the bond mar­kets demand­ing the con­trary. There are no effec­tive mech­a­nisms that can pro­duce the needed adjust­ment in the short term. Deval­u­a­tion is impos­si­ble within the single-currency area; fis­cal trans­fers and labour mobil­ity are cur­rently insuf­fi­cient; and struc­tural reforms will take time. Actions by cen­tral banks, the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund and the Euro­pean Finan­cial Sta­bil­ity Facil­ity can only cre­ate time for adjust­ment. They are not sub­sti­tutes for it.

• The route to restor­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness is through fis­cal and struc­tural reforms. These real adjust­ments are the respon­si­bil­ity of cit­i­zens, firms and gov­ern­ments within the affected coun­tries, not cen­tral banks. A sus­tained process of rel­a­tive wage adjust­ment will be nec­es­sary, imply­ing large declines in liv­ing stan­dards for a period in up to one-third of the euro area. We wel­come the mea­sures announced last week by Euro­pean author­i­ties, which go some way to address­ing these issues

• Aus­ter­ity is a nec­es­sary con­di­tion for rebal­anc­ing, but it is sel­dom suf­fi­cient. There are really only three options to reduce debt: restruc­tur­ing, infla­tion and growth. Whether we like it or not, debt restruc­tur­ing may hap­pen. If it is to be done, it is best done quickly. Policy-makers need to be care­ful about delay­ing the inevitable and merely fund­ing the pri­vate exit. His­tor­i­cally, as an option to restruc­tur­ing, finan­cial repres­sion has been used to achieve neg­a­tive inter­est rates

Get­ting growth restarted

• (Amer­i­cans’) net worth has fallen from 6 ½ times income pre cri­sis to about 5 at present. These losses can only be recov­ered through a com­bi­na­tion of increased sav­ings and, even­tu­ally, ris­ing prices for houses and finan­cial assets. Each will clearly take time.

• The most palat­able strat­egy to reduce debt is to increase growth. In today’s real­ity, the hur­dles are sig­nif­i­cant. Once lever­age is high in one sec­tor or region, it is very hard to reduce it with­out at least tem­porar­ily increas­ing it elsewhere.

• In recent years, large fis­cal expan­sions in the cri­sis economies have helped to sus­tain aggre­gate demand in the face of pri­vate delever­ag­ing. How­ever, the win­dow for such Augus­tin­ian pol­icy is rapidly clos­ing. Few except the United States, by dint of its reserve cur­rency sta­tus, can main­tain it for much longer.

• With delever­ag­ing economies under pres­sure, global growth will require global rebal­anc­ing. Cred­i­tor nations, mainly emerg­ing mar­kets that have ben­e­fited from the debt-fuelled demand boom in advanced economies, must now pick up the baton.

• This will be hard to accom­plish with­out co-operation. Major advanced economies with defi­cient demand can­not con­sol­i­date their fis­cal posi­tions and boost house­hold sav­ings with­out sup­port from increased for­eign demand. Mean­while, emerg­ing mar­kets, see­ing their growth decel­er­ate because of sag­ging demand in advanced coun­tries, are reluc­tant to aban­don a strat­egy that has served them so well in the past, and are refus­ing to let their exchange rates mate­ri­ally adjust.

• (Both advanced economies and emerg­ing mar­kets) are dou­bling down on los­ing strate­gies. As the Bank has out­lined before, rel­a­tive to a co-operative solu­tion embod­ied in the G-20’s Action Plan, the fore­gone out­put could be enor­mous: lower world GDP by more than US$7 tril­lion within five years. Canada has a big stake in avoid­ing this outcome.

Impli­ca­tions for Canada

• Canada has dis­tin­guished itself through the debt super cycle, though there are some recent trends that bear watch­ing. Over the past twenty years, our non-financial debt increased less than any other G-7 coun­try. In par­tic­u­lar, gov­ern­ment indebt­ed­ness fell sharply, and cor­po­rate lever­age is cur­rently at a record low.

• Over the same period, Cana­dian house­holds increased their bor­row­ing sig­nif­i­cantly. Cana­di­ans have now col­lec­tively run a net finan­cial deficit for more than a decade, in effect, demand­ing funds from the rest of the econ­omy, rather than pro­vid­ing them, as had been the case since the Leafs last won the Cup.

• Devel­op­ments since 2008 have reduced our mar­gin of manoeu­vre. In an envi­ron­ment of low inter­est rates and a well-functioning finan­cial sys­tem, house­hold debt has risen by another 13 per­cent­age points, rel­a­tive to income. Cana­di­ans are now more indebted than the Amer­i­cans or the British. Our cur­rent account has also returned to deficit, mean­ing that for­eign debt has begun to creep back up.

• Cana­dian firms should rec­og­nize four real­i­ties: they are not as pro­duc­tive as they could be; they are under­ex­posed to fast-growing emerg­ing mar­kets; those in the com­mod­ity sec­tor can expect rel­a­tively ele­vated prices for some time; and they can all ben­e­fit from one of the most resilient finan­cial sys­tems in the world. In a world where delever­ag­ing holds back demand in our tra­di­tional for­eign mar­kets, the imper­a­tive is for Cana­dian com­pa­nies to invest in improv­ing their pro­duc­tiv­ity and to access fast grow­ing emerg­ing markets.

Putting today’s chal­lenges in context

In read­ing this talk and in shar­ing Mark Carney’s per­spec­tives with clients, sober­ing as they are, there are three con­sid­er­a­tions to bear in mind:

Per­haps the most pos­i­tive news is that Europe’s lead­ers appear to be com­ing to terms with real­ity. It does seem that not just Car­ney, but politi­cians and cen­tral bankers across Europe do grasp the grav­ity of the chal­lenges; and are start­ing to imple­ment strong mea­sures in response.

Sec­ond, strate­gists uni­ver­sally agree that the mar­ket has priced in a reces­sion in Europe. Unless things get much worse, vir­tu­ally all of the chal­lenges Car­ney out­lines are reflected in cur­rent stock prices.

And finally; a reminder of the con­tin­u­ing divide between the bad news when it comes to debt and eco­nomic growth on the one hand and com­pa­nies that are con­tin­u­ing to find ways to deliver strong earn­ings on the other. Just remem­ber that at some point com­pany earn­ings have to re-establish a con­nec­tion with over­all eco­nomic growth.

If you’re inter­ested in read­ing more, here’s a link to Jef­frey Simpson’s Globe column:

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/jeffrey-simpson/mark-carney-the-man-who-speaks-the-truth/article2270030/?service=mobile

And here’s the full text of Mark Carney’s speech:

http://​www​.bankof​canada​.ca/​w​p​-​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​u​p​l​o​a​d​s​/​2​0​1​1​/​1​2​/​s​p​e​e​c​h​-​1​2​1​2​1​1​.​pdf

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Tags: Bank Of Canada, Bank Of Canada Governor, Current Issues, Debt Woes, Discourse, Flavour, Global Growth, Globe And Mail, Insightful Perspectives, Investment Gurus, Jeffrey Simpson, Leverage, Mark Carney, New Era, Norm, Proactive, Punches, Term Focus, Term Outlook, Timeframe
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Bringing discipline to client portfolios

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

In light of the events of the last nine months, investors and advi­sors alike are reex­am­in­ing the process used to build portfolios.

A May 25 in the Globe and Mail high­lighted two tools to over­come investors’ (and some advisors’) emotional reac­tions to mar­ket move­ments, cre­at­ing the impulse to buy and sell at exactly the wrong times. The arti­cle quoted  the words of Walt Kelly’s 1950’s car­toon char­ac­ter Pogo:  “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

The solu­tion for advi­sors lies in bring­ing much more dis­ci­pline to how client port­fo­lios are man­aged, using two tools from insti­tu­tional investors. The goal is to bor­row War­ren Buffett’s dis­pas­sion­ate approach to invest­ing, which he sum­ma­rizes as: “Be fear­ful when oth­ers are greedy and be greedy when oth­ers are fearful.”

To read the arti­cle click on :

http://​the​globe​and​mail​.com/​g​l​o​b​e​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​o​r​/​i​n​v​e​s​t​m​e​n​t​-​i​d​e​a​s​/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​s​/​e​x​p​e​r​t​s​-​p​o​d​i​u​m​/​b​r​i​n​g​i​n​g​-​s​t​r​i​c​t​-​d​i​s​c​i​p​l​i​n​e​-​t​o​-​y​o​u​r​-​p​o​r​t​f​o​l​i​o​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​1​1​5​2​2​22/

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Tags: Advertisement, Buy And Sell, Buy Sell, Cartoon Character, Client Portfolios, Emotional Reactions, Globe And Mail, Globe Investor, Globe Mail, Impulse, Institutional Investors, Investing, Investment Ideas, Investor Investment, Lt, Mail Tools, Nine Months, Podium, Pogo, Portfolio, Strict Discipline, Target, Two Tools, Walt Kelly, Warren Buffett
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Stress Testing Clients’ (and Prospects) Retirement Plans

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

Many Cana­di­ans are unsure if they’ll be able to hit their long term goals and as a result feel out of con­trol of their finan­cial future.

In a recent arti­cle in the Globe and Mail, I dis­cussed the need for investors and the advi­sors they work with to review and update finan­cial plans, stress test­ing those plans by look­ing at the impact of dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios going for­ward in three cat­e­gories. Advi­sors need to stress test three things with clients — how much they’ll spend in retire­ment, how much they’ll save for retire­ment and the risk they’ll take in invest­ing those sav­ings along the way. For each of these you can cre­ate a base case and then exam­ine the impact of dif­fer­ent scenarios.

Stress test one: Spend­ing in retirement

Once you’ve cre­ated a base case (per­haps with a high spend­ing and low spend­ing sce­nario) you can stress test for the impact of higher than expected infla­tion (a grow­ing con­cern among some econ­o­mists due to the record lev­els of spend­ing by Gov­ern­ments around the world) and the effect of unan­tic­i­pated expenses such as an extended stay in a long term care facil­ity or nurs­ing home.

Stress test two: How much clients save before retirement

Many clients have already increased sav­ings lev­els and made the deci­sion to defer retire­ment. A recent sur­vey indi­cated 60% of Cana­di­ans are con­cerned about some­one in their house being laid off — you can stress test the impact of clients los­ing their jobs or earn­ing less part time income after retir­ing than expected.

Stress test three: The risk on savings

Given what’s hap­pened to mar­kets, many Cana­di­ans would pre­fer to avoid risk entirely … so you could start by stress test­ing a retire­ment plan for the impact of the 2% return cur­rently avail­able on GICs.

For most Cana­di­ans with­out guar­an­teed com­pany pen­sion plans, a 2% return means they’re almost cer­tain to run out of money in their 80s. You can do fur­ther stress tests at 4%, 6% and 8% returns– look­ing at the greater volatil­ity and risk that comes with each of those higher return lev­els and help­ing clients under­stand the trade­offs between risk and return.

You need to empha­size to clients this is not a sta­tic process, for this stress test­ing process to be remain accu­rate, it needs to be updated every year or two. The good news is that even if clients aren’t exactly where they hope to be, events in a year’s time may have changed so they are closer to their goals.

To read the full arti­cle, go to: http://​www​.the​globe​and​mail​.com/​g​l​o​b​e​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​o​r​/​i​n​v​e​s​t​m​e​n​t​-​i​d​e​a​s​/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​s​/​e​x​p​e​r​t​s​-​p​o​d​i​u​m​/​t​a​k​e​-​a​-​s​t​r​e​s​s​-​t​e​s​t​-​o​f​-​y​o​u​r​-​o​w​n​-​p​o​r​t​f​o​l​i​o​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​1​1​8​7​9​64/

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Tags: Base Case, Canadians, Company Pension, Financial Future, Gics, Globe And Mail, Globe Mail, Growing Concern, Long Term Care, Long Term Care Facility, Recent Article, Retirement Plan, Stress Test, Stress Testing, Stress Tests, Term Care Facility, Term Goals, Test One, Time Income, Volatility
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A C.A. speaks out – Candid feedback from a referral source

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

Recently, my weekly col­umn in the Globe and Mail talked about the desire by many clients to be more involved in the deci­sions on their accounts and to act more like part­ners with their advisors.

In response I got an email from a C.A. in a mid-sized com­mu­nity in south­ern Ontario – we sub­se­quently spoke on the phone.

His approach to referrals

This C.A. has spent twenty years work­ing on his own sup­ported by a small team of asso­ciates, focus­ing on busi­ness owners.

As well as audits and tax advice, he also is a cer­ti­fied finan­cial plan­ner and does finan­cial plan­ning. He has his­tor­i­cally sup­plied clients with­out an invest­ment advi­sor with a list of three to five advi­sors who they could talk to about imple­ment­ing their plan – gen­er­ally based on advi­sors that exist­ing clients were work­ing with.

He does this as a ser­vice to clients with no expec­ta­tion of being rewarded by either clients or advi­sors–  he men­tioned that he takes pride in going above and beyond to help clients.  He doesn’t ini­ti­ate refer­rals to advi­sors – if clients are happy where they are, he’s fine with that. The only time he makes refer­rals is when clients are unhappy, ask for sug­ges­tions or don’t have an advi­sor in place to imple­ment a finan­cial plan he’s devel­oped for him.

In some cases, he has par­tic­i­pated in meet­ings with clients and advi­sors two or three times a year, pro­vided that clients were pre­pared to pay for his time to do this – but gen­er­ally he has not been involved in the process after mak­ing refer­rals, other than prepar­ing taxes.

The his­tor­i­cal experience

His­tor­i­cally, his clients were gen­er­ally happy with the advi­sors he referred them to, although there were a cou­ple of con­sis­tent irritants.

One related to the qual­ity of report­ing. He com­mented that invest­ment indus­try report­ing is not uni­form and dif­fi­cult to deci­pher – it can take him an hour to cal­cu­late how clients have actu­ally done.

He went on to say that some firms look like they’re delib­er­ately mak­ing it hard for clients to fig­ure out what their annual return looks like and to deter­mine what clients have paid in fees. He did say that this has become bet­ter recently as some advi­sors have moved to charg­ing fees sep­a­rately, so that they are deductible on client taxes.

He’s also had some clients com­ment on the fact that after hav­ing paid him to develop a finan­cial plan, there was no reduc­tion in fees charged by their invest­ment advi­sor – in effect they felt they’re paid twice, once for the C.A. to develop the plan and a sec­ond time for the invest­ment advisor’s embed­ded cost of doing this plan.

He’s never had an advi­sor try to find a way to have the time they saved by not hav­ing to do a plan reflected in reduced fees to clients or ask about try­ing to find a way to help off­set the cost for this C.A. to con­tinue to be involved in client meetings.

And when I asked about whether advi­sors had offered to sit down with him to walk through their invest­ment approach or process to man­age client risk, he said he’s never had some­one offer to do that.

Rethink­ing the approach to referrals

A cou­ple of things are caus­ing him to rethink his approach to referrals.

One was an arti­cle in the March issue of C.A. mag­a­zine, talk­ing about the oppor­tu­nity for C.As to become more involved in help­ing clients reeval­u­ate their invest­ment strat­egy and phi­los­o­phy and  mon­i­tor their invest­ment plan.

He said it’s also become appar­ent to him that some clients have seen the names he sug­gested they talk to as an endorse­ment. This was par­tic­u­larly a prob­lem where clients were not actively involved in the invest­ment process, but del­e­gated and deferred to the advisor.

As a result, in future he will be more care­ful both about the clients he refers and the advi­sors he refers them to. He also plans to make his role more explicit, both ver­bally and in the engage­ment let­ter he has clients sign and encour­age clients to talk to more than one advi­sor before pick­ing some­one. He said that most advi­sors seem fine with this, although some years ago one advi­sor called him and said that he was not inter­ested in par­tic­i­pat­ing in a beauty con­test and that if this C.A. was going to give his clients mul­ti­ple advi­sors to talk to, then to take him off the list.

Tak­ing ver­sus giving

At the end of our con­ver­sa­tion, I asked about the kind of acknowl­edge­ment he’d received from advi­sors he’d referred clients to.

His com­ment was that in his expe­ri­ence most finan­cial advi­sors are much bet­ter at tak­ing than giving.

His­tor­i­cally he’s made two to three refer­rals a year, so about fifty refer­rals over the past twenty years. In that time, he’s never received a refer­ral in return or had an advi­sor ask about the nature of his busi­ness, should he or she run into a busi­ness owner who might ben­e­fit from this C.A.’s services.

And while he nor­mally receives a thank you call after refer­ring clients, typ­i­cally that’s as far as it goes.

He did com­ment that there are a cou­ple of advi­sors in his com­mu­nity who’ve picked up half a dozen clients in the past three or four years as a result of his referrals.

One of those advi­sors makes a point of invit­ing him and one of his clients out to lunch two or three times a year. He went on to say that even though he con­sid­ers these two advi­sors equally com­pe­tent, he can’t help being more dis­posed to mak­ing addi­tional refer­rals to the advi­sor who takes him and his client out to lunch periodically.

“I’m human like every­one else” this C.A. said. “Even though I know this shouldn’t affect my deci­sions, it’s still nice to feel that some­one who’s mak­ing money from refer­rals I’ve made doesn’t take me for granted.”

Key take­aways

I took a few things away from this conversation.

The first is that the changes as a result of events of the past cou­ple of years aren’t lim­ited to clients but also extend to the pro­fes­sion­als who some­times refer those clients.

As a result, advi­sors need to do a bet­ter job of com­mu­ni­cat­ing the process they have to mon­i­tor and man­age risk.

They and their firms need to do a bet­ter job on report­ing and on trans­parency of compensation.

And finally, many advi­sors need to think harder about how they acknowl­edge the sources of referrals.

None of these were nec­es­sar­ily crit­i­cal in the past – but will play an increas­ingly impor­tant role for advi­sors who want to max­i­mize refer­ral oppor­tu­ni­ties in future.

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Tags: Audits, Business Owners, Candid Feedback, Certified Financial Planner, Compendium, Email, Expectation, Financial Planning, Globe And Mail, Investment Advisor, Investment Industry, Preparing Taxes, Referral Source, Referrals, Southern Ontario, Target, Tax Advice, Three Times, Twenty Years, Weekly Column
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Three Articles to Combat Celebrity Bears

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

Last week’s “Night of the bears” in Toronto drew lots of media coverage.Here are three arti­cles you can send clients that pro­vide per­spec­tive on the celebrity bears — two come for the Globe and Mail, the other fea­tures Pro­fes­sor Jeremy Siegel from Whar­ton in an arti­cle and audio interview.“Celebrity bears all the rage; but we’ve seen fads before”
Bear­ish mantras need to be heard; but with a grain of salt
<http://​www​.the​globe​and​mail​.com/​s​e​r​v​l​e​t​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​R​T​G​A​M​.​2​0​0​9​0​4​1​0​.​w​t​a​k​i​n​g​s​t​o​c​k​0​4​1​1​/​E​m​a​i​l​B​N​S​t​o​r​y​/​r​o​b​C​o​l​u​m​n​s​B​l​o​gs/>

”Bears, bulls and the haz­ards of guru­dom”
Con­sider the pos­si­bil­ity that the bears might miss it when the econ­omy turns
<http://​www​.the​globe​and​mail​.com/​s​e​r​v​l​e​t​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​R​T​G​A​M​.​2​0​0​9​0​4​0​8​.​w​d​e​c​l​o​e​t​0​4​0​9​/​E​m​a​i​l​B​N​S​t​o​r​y​/​S​p​e​c​i​a​l​E​v​e​n​t​s2/>

Jeremy Siegel: ‘Once the Mar­ket Has Fallen 50%, Your Future Returns Are Even Bet­ter’
http://​knowl​edge​.whar​ton​.upenn​.edu/​i​n​d​e​x​.​c​f​m​?​f​a​=​v​i​e​w​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​&​a​m​p​;​i​d​=​2​188
U.S. stocks raised eye­brows this week and last, clos­ing higher in six of seven trad­ing days, includ­ing four in a row from March 10 to 13. But how does the mar­ket look for the longer term? In an inter­view with Knowledge@Wharton, Whar­ton finance pro­fes­sor Jeremy J. Siegel says he was pleased to see con­sec­u­tive gains after so many declines. He adds that his­tory pro­vides lots of evi­dence that stocks remain good long-term invest­ments, espe­cially when they are down 50% from their peak.

Visit http://​knowl​edge​.whar​ton​.upenn​.edu/​i​n​d​e​x​.​c​f​m​?​f​a​=​v​i​e​w​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​&​a​m​p​;​i​d​=​2​188 for the com­plete story.

For more infor­ma­tion, please visit http://​www​.get​keep​clients​.com.

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Tags: All The Rage, Audio Interview, Declines, Eyebrows, Fads, Finance Professor, Future Returns, Globe And Mail, Grain Of Salt, Jeremy J Siegel, Jeremy Siegel, Mantras, Media Coverage, Peak Visit, Professor Jeremy, Servlet, Term Investments, Theglobeandmail, Upenn, Wharton
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Seven positive articles to email clients

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

Amidst all of the mar­ket uncertainty, some advi­sors find it help­ful to email arti­cles that pro­vide a gen­er­ally upbeat view of mid term prospects.For exam­ple, a recent cover story on Macleans fea­tured “The case for opti­mism.” Other arti­cles come from the Globe and Mail, National Post and Toronto Star.

Macleans

To view “The case for opti­mism”, March 24 — go to www​.macleans​.ca

Globe and Mail Report on Business

“Bear rally or not, there will be a recov­ery” — March 24, Rob Car­rick When the mar­ket does come back, it’s going to look a lot like it has in the past cou­ple of weeks
<http://​www​.the​globe​and​mail​.com/​s​e​r​v​l​e​t​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​R​T​G​A​M​.​2​0​0​9​0​3​2​3​.​w​c​a​r​r​i​c​k​0​3​2​4​/​E​m​a​i​l​B​N​S​t​o​r​y​/​S​p​e​c​i​a​l​E​v​e​n​t​s2/>

Tak­ing (Buffett’s) mea­sure of the mar­ket” — March 12, Derek DeCloet
Where is the bot­tom? Even War­ren Buf­fett doesn’t want to guess
<http://​www​.the​globe​and​mail​.com/​s​e​r​v​l​e​t​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​R​T​G​A​M​.​2​0​0​9​0​3​1​1​.​w​d​e​c​l​o​e​t​0​3​1​2​/​E​m​a​i​l​B​N​S​t​o​r​y​/​r​o​b​C​o​l​u​m​n​s​B​l​o​gs/>

The art of ignor­ing the pendulum’s swing — March 13, Dan Richards

http://​www​.the​globe​and​mail​.com/​p​a​r​t​n​e​r​s​/​f​r​e​e​/​g​l​o​b​e​i​n​v​e​s​t​o​r​/​i​n​v​e​s​t​m​e​n​t​/​f​e​b​0​9​/​o​n​l​i​n​e​/​p​e​n​d​u​l​u​m​.​h​tml

The pre­ferred approach” — March 27, Rob Car­rick
Banks have lately issued hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in pre­ferred shares, and investors have been ready buy­ers
<http://​www​.the​globe​and​mail​.com/​s​e​r​v​l​e​t​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​R​T​G​A​M​.​2​0​0​9​0​3​2​7​.​w​s​t​m​a​i​n​0​3​2​8​/​E​m​a​i​l​B​N​S​t​o​r​y​/​S​p​e​c​i​a​l​E​v​e​n​t​s2/>

“New faith in energy stocks” — March 23, Rob Car­rick
Suncor’s bid for Petro­can might be a sig­nal it is time to dip back into the oil patch
<http://​www​.the​globe​and​mail​.com/​s​e​r​v​l​e​t​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​R​T​G​A​M​.​2​0​0​9​0​3​2​3​.​w​p​e​t​r​o​c​a​n​C​a​r​r​i​c​k​0​3​2​3​/​E​m​a​i​l​B​N​S​t​o​r​y​/​S​p​e​c​i​a​l​E​v​e​n​t​s2/>

National Post

Mar­ket has changed stripes

Levi Folk, March 26

We now have a mar­ket that wants to rally, and that is a very dif­fer­ent beast from prior months. U. S. stock mar­kets clawed their way back to gains late in the day yes­ter­day, extend­ing the best monthly result for the S&P 500 in nearly two decades. The cat­a­lyst is a string of data sug­gest­ing that a mas­sive inven­tory rebound will take the U. S. econ­omy back from the brink, aided by a flood of cheap financing.

Toronto Star

Fair­fax Con­trar­ian Cashes in Might­ily — March 28, James Dawe http://​www​.thes​tar​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​6​0​9​732

For more infor­ma­tion, please visit http://​www​.get​keep​clients​.com.

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Tags: Decloet, Energy Stocks, Globe And Mail, Late In The Day, Mail Report, Market Uncertainty, New Faith, Oil Patch, Pendulum, Preferred Approach, Preferred Shares, Report On Business, Rob Carrick, Suncor, Swing March, Term Prospects, Theglobeandmail, Toronto Star, Upbeat View, Warren Buffett
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