Posts Tagged ‘Roller Coaster’

Three Minutes That Lost a New Client

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

by Dan Richards, Cli​entIn​sights​.ca

Being a finan­cial advi­sor can be a roller coaster – one week you get a refer­ral that leads to a ter­rific new client, the next you lose a long-standing rela­tion­ship for rea­sons entirely beyond your con­trol. A recent call from a suc­cess­ful advi­sor look­ing for advice reminded of the fine line between suc­cess and failure.

An engi­neer by train­ing, Bob came into the invest­ment indus­try fif­teen years ago, today he runs a grow­ing prac­tice focused on mid and high-level cor­po­rate exec­u­tives in the tech and man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­tries. Last fall, he invited top clients to a mar­ket out­look lunch at a pri­vate room at a top local restau­rant. He asked clients inter­ested in attend­ing to call him directly to dis­cuss spe­cific ques­tions they wanted to address.

Bob sent out 50 invi­ta­tions and had about 15 clients say yes, over twice the response to sand­wich lunches in his board­room. (A free meal shouldn’t make a dif­fer­ence to mil­lion dol­lar clients, but expe­ri­ence shows that it does.) After talk­ing on the phone to the clients attend­ing about what they’d like to cover, he men­tioned that while this lunch was pri­mar­ily for exist­ing clients, he did have a few extra spots and asked if they had one friend or co-worker who might be inter­ested in attend­ing as their guest.

Cap­i­tal­iz­ing on an opening

A client in a senior role at a mid-sized tech com­pany brought along a work col­league, let’s call his guest Jim. Both the exist­ing client and Jim had sub­stan­tial equity in their firm, while they might not be huge clients cur­rently, they both rep­re­sent very sig­nif­i­cant future potential.

The lunch went well with lots of inter­ac­tion and dis­cus­sion. Next morn­ing, Bob called his client to get his impres­sions of the lunch and also to get per­mis­sion to fol­low up with Jim. While that follow-up call was politely received, Jim begged off an imme­di­ate meet­ing due to travel and work pres­sures, but did agree that Bob could add him to his monthly email list and then fol­low up in January.

Bob con­nected with Jim early in the new year and they agreed to meet for a casual con­ver­sa­tion over a mid-morning cof­fee at a Star­bucks across the street from Jim’s office. Bob got there early to ensure that they got a table in the cor­ner and was wait­ing when Jim arrived.

After get­ting there cof­fees, Bob thanked Jim for tak­ing the time to meet and said that his goal was sim­ply to get to know Jim bet­ter, then asked if he had any­thing in par­tic­u­lar he’d like to get out of their con­ver­sa­tion. Jim paused, thought for a moment and said, “Not really, no” … and then went on to say: “Before com­ing over, I glanced at your pro­file on Linked-In, was a bit sur­prised to see that the only thing there was your cur­rent role with­out any his­tory or back­ground, so I’d like to hear more about you.”

He then went on to say: “I assume you’ve looked at my Linked-In pro­file, do you have any ques­tions about my back­ground?”   There was an awk­ward pause while Jim waited for Bob’s answer. Bob first of all explained that updat­ing his Linked-In pro­file was on his to-do list, but other pri­or­i­ties had got in the way. And he apol­o­gized that he didn’t have a chance to look at Jim’s pro­file before their meet­ing and asked him to tell him a bit about himself.

Bob and Jim went on to have a cor­dial con­ver­sa­tion. When the meet­ing wrapped up after 30 min­utes, Bob sug­gested sched­ul­ing a time for a more in-depth dis­cus­sion of Jim’s sit­u­a­tion. Jim thanked him for for the offer, but said that while he’d enjoyed the con­ver­sa­tion, given how busy he is, he’s not inter­ested in talk­ing fur­ther at this point. Jim did agree that Bob could keep on his monthly email list and that he could check back in 12 months, but Bob walked away feel­ing that what had seemed a promis­ing oppor­tu­nity had turned cold.

The new expec­ta­tions for meet­ing preparation

Bob called me later that day to get my thoughts on how he should fol­low up with Jim and also what he could learn from the meet­ing. There were two obvi­ous take­aways from the meet­ing with Jim:

First, before con­tact­ing prospects and cer­tainly before meet­ing them, advi­sors will more and more need to get into the habit of first check­ing prospects’ Linked-In pro­files. This is obvi­ously less rel­e­vant if you work with retirees, but if you work with busi­ness own­ers or pro­fes­sion­als and cer­tainly if you work in the tech space as Bob does, this has become expected behav­iour. More and more, not check­ing someone’s Linked-In pro­file before call­ing them or meet­ing them will send the sig­nal that you’re not seri­ous enough to invest three min­utes in basic research. (Note that Bob could have checked Jim’s pro­file while wait­ing for him at Starbucks.)

Sec­ond, advi­sors need to get seri­ous about their own Linked-In pro­files. I rec­og­nize that some firms still limit what advi­sors can put on their Linked-In pro­files (although I’m not clear as to why there should be dif­fer­ent stan­dards for Linked-In vs advi­sor web­sites), but the indus­try as a whole needs to adjust to today’s real­ity here and do it sooner rather than later.

With regard to how to fol­low up with Jim, I sug­gested that Bob update his LinkedIn pro­file and then send Jim a note, thank­ing him for pro­vid­ing the impe­tus to move this up Bob’s pri­or­ity list. This won’t recoup all the ground that was lost, but per­haps will be a beginning.

For advi­sors who want to know more about how to incor­po­rate Linked-In to your prac­tice, below are links to two arti­cles that appeared last year:

The Game-Changer for Attract­ing Afflu­ent Clients

8 Steps to a Prof­itable LinkedIn Strategy

 

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A template for a year end letter

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Many advi­sors have told me they’ve got a pos­i­tive response from the quar­terly review let­ters they’ve sent based on the tem­plates I’ve provided.

Here’s a tem­plate that can be a start­ing point for a year end review let­ter – just remem­ber that to be effec­tive, a let­ter such as this one needs to feel:

1.       sub­stan­tive

2.       can­did

3.       backed up by facts

4.       easy to read

5.       that it reflects the per­son­al­ity of the advi­sor writ­ing it.

That means you need to take the time to per­son­al­ize the let­ter to lan­guage and exam­ples you’d use and to reflect your point of view.

Draft year end review letter

Decem­ber 7, 2009

Look­ing back -  and look­ing forward

2009 was one of those years that reminded us what a roller coaster the stock mar­ket can be – and also of the dan­gers of con­ven­tional thinking.

After the col­lapse in global finan­cial mar­kets last fall and the result­ing pum­melling taken by stock mar­kets around the world, the con­sen­sus in Jan­u­ary was that the worst was behind us. That was a sharp reminder of the dan­ger of con­ven­tional think­ing – by early March, mar­kets in Canada had declined by a fur­ther 15% and the U.S. was down by 25%.

At that point, the con­sen­sus shifted and there was grow­ing sen­ti­ment that we might be enter­ing a long period of eco­nomic stag­na­tion; that’s when we heard respected eco­nomic fore­cast­ers talk about a one in five chance of another depres­sion. It was pre­cisely at this point that the coor­di­nated stim­u­lus spend­ing by gov­ern­ments around the world finally had an impact and we began see­ing signs of an eco­nomic recov­ery. From the market’s bot­tom on March 9 to the end of Novem­ber, global mar­kets were up by 50% to 65%.

Adver­tise­ment


Thus, 2009 was a sharp reminder that it’s impos­si­ble to pre­dict short term mar­ket movements.

Instead we need to focus on two key questions:

1.       First, what do the prospects for eco­nomic and profit growth look like in the mid term – 12 to 18 months and beyond?

2.       Sec­ond, to what extent are these prospects for growth accu­rately reflected in today’s prices of stocks and bonds?

Mid term prospects for growth (Cus­tomize this to your own point of view)

In build­ing port­fo­lios, we have to start with some core assump­tions about the envi­ron­ment we’ll be in going forward.

Noted British his­to­rian Paul John­son has writ­ten that at every given point in time, you can always point to good news and bad news – the only dif­fer­ence is the bal­ance between the two and what the media pays atten­tion to.

This para­graph can be deleted if you feel the let­ter is too long for your clients to read: In early 2000 (at the height of the tech bub­ble) and the begin­ning of 2008 (at the top of the real estate and finance bub­ble), all we read about was good news – almost no atten­tion was paid to any off­set­ting con­cerns. By con­trast, dur­ing mar­ket bot­toms at the end of 2003 and early 2009, all we saw was the bad news – it’s as if there were no pos­i­tives on the hori­zon.

Despite the recov­ery in the global econ­omy and mar­kets since the early part of this year, the gen­eral sen­ti­ment and con­fi­dence level among many peo­ple today is quite neg­a­tive. Much of that is dri­ven by con­cerns about the U.S. econ­omy – still the engine of global growth.

And cer­tainly there are lots of things to worry about in the U.S. – stub­bornly high unem­ploy­ment, a hous­ing mar­ket that is still depressed (although no longer in decline) and Gov­ern­ment deficits.

With­out dis­miss­ing the short term chal­lenges fac­ing the US, it’s impor­tant not to lose sight of some impor­tant under­ly­ing positives.

In an August cover story on “The case for opti­mism” Busi­ness Week Mag­a­zine high­lighted a num­ber of rea­sons to be pos­i­tive, among them the impact of tech­nol­ogy and free mar­kets in emerg­ing economies.

Click here to read more about what Busi­ness Week had to say:

http://​www​.busi​ness​week​.com/​m​a​g​a​z​i​n​e​/​t​o​c​/​0​9​_​3​4​/​B​4​1​4​4​o​p​t​i​m​i​s​m​.​h​t​m​?​c​h​a​n​=​m​a​g​a​z​i​n​e​+​c​h​a​n​n​e​l​_​t​o​p​+​s​t​o​r​ies

And recently two respected colum­nists at the New York Times, Thomas Fried­man and David Brooks,  weighed in on both the pos­i­tives in the U.S. and some of the chal­lenges that Amer­ica faces.

http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​1​1​/​2​2​/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​2​2​f​r​i​e​d​m​a​n​.​h​tml

http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​1​1​/​1​7​/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​1​7​b​r​o​o​k​s​.​h​tml

The bot­tom line is: In the mid term I believe the pos­i­tives out­weigh the neg­a­tives and that the dire pre­dic­tions about America’s decline are over­stated. It may not see the rapid growth we’ve seen in the past but it will see solid growth.

Today’s val­u­a­tion lev­els (Cus­tomize this to your own point of view)

Being right on our midterm out­look for the econ­omy only helps us if we buy stocks and bonds at attrac­tive prices.

With regard to bonds, at cur­rent inter­est rates of about 3% it is hard to make a case for Gov­ern­ment bonds as any­thing except a safe har­bour against more mar­ket disruption.

The returns on cor­po­rate bonds are more inter­est­ing – espe­cially toward the bot­tom of the invest­ment grade cat­e­gory, which cur­rently yield about 6%. Note that we do have to be very selec­tive here, since com­pa­nies with low invest­ment grade rat­ings are sus­cep­ti­ble to shocks and down­grades should the econ­omy run into difficulty.

On the issue of val­u­a­tion lev­els of stocks, there are lots of aca­d­e­mics who have made a career of study­ing mar­kets. Of these, I fol­low two in par­tic­u­lar – Jeremy Siegel at the Whar­ton School at the Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia and Robert Shiller at Yale.  Between them, they fore­cast both the tech­nol­ogy and the U.S. real estate bubbles.

Robert Shiller believes stocks should be val­ued based on their aver­age earn­ings over the past ten years, using what he calls the Cycli­cally Adu­jsted Price Earn­ings ratio (CAPE for short). Employ­ing that mea­sure, at the end of Novem­ber Shiller cal­cu­lates the U.S. market’s mul­ti­ple is 19.5 x times aver­age earn­ings for the past ten years, within the nor­mal his­tor­i­cal range (although at the high end of that range.)

Prior to 2008, you have to go back to 1992 to find the last time we saw this mul­ti­ple con­sis­tently below twenty times aver­age ten year earn­ings. Through­out the period from 1997 to 2001, this mul­ti­ple was in the thir­ties and for­ties – when the mul­ti­ple was in its for­ties, you were pay­ing twice as much for a dol­lar of earn­ings as you are today.

Jeremy Siegel is the best known researcher on long term returns in the stock mar­ket and author of Stocks for the Long Run, often cited as one of the all-time ten most influ­en­tial books on invest­ing. Among his claims to fame is an arti­cle in the Wall Street Jour­nal at the peak of the tech mania in early 2000, pre­dict­ing that sector’s collapse.

In Sep­tem­ber, Siegel did two inter­views on long term returns and cur­rent val­u­a­tions, in which he talked about his research and his opin­ion that stocks offered good value at the time. You can see those inter­views below:

Pro­fes­sor Jeremy Siegel on today’s mar­ket out­look:
http://​www​.cli​entin​sights​.ca/​v​i​d​e​o​/​t​o​d​a​y​-​s​-​v​a​l​u​a​t​i​o​n​-​l​e​v​e​l​s​-​a​n​d​-​m​a​r​k​e​t​-​o​u​t​l​o​o​k​/​t​y​p​e​:​i​n​v​e​s​tor

Pro­fes­sor Jeremy Siegel on long term stock returns:
http://​www​.cli​entin​sights​.ca/​v​i​d​e​o​/​s​t​o​c​k​s​-​f​o​r​-​t​h​e​-​l​o​n​g​-​r​u​n​-​a​n​d​-​l​o​n​g​-​t​e​r​m​-​r​e​t​u​r​n​s​/​t​y​p​e​:​i​n​v​e​s​tor

The bot­tom line from these two experts: While stocks are not as cheap as they were in March, by his­tor­i­cal stan­dards they do offer rea­son­able value.

While we can expect con­tin­ued volatil­ity in 2010, we do believe that returns on stocks in the period ahead will be in line with his­tor­i­cal levels.

The right approach for your portfolio

While my team and I spend a great deal of time focus­ing on the big pic­ture, the most impor­tant issue is how we adapt that view to each client’s indi­vid­ual portfolio.

For older clients, we have always been believ­ers in main­tain­ing con­ser­v­a­tive, bal­anced port­fo­lios – that stance pro­tected our retired clients from the worst of the decline in 2008 and early this year. Today, we are focus­ing on higher qual­ity stocks, as we believe that these will pro­vide the best risk return trade­off going forward.

In sum­mary, we are cau­tiously opti­mistic about the Amer­i­can and the global economy’s abil­ity to work through some of the cur­rent issues they face – and believe that val­u­a­tions on stocks will make qual­ity stocks an attrac­tive invest­ment in the mid term.

We look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to work with you in 2010 to ensure you have the port­fo­lio that is right for you – and thank you again for the oppor­tu­nity to work with you over the past while.

As always, my team and I area always avail­able to talk about any ques­tions that you might have.

In the mean­time, best wishes for a relax­ing hol­i­day sea­son – I look for­ward to talk­ing in 2010.

Sin­cerely,
Name of advisor

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Warren Buffett on investing in a climate of fear – a Q1 letter to send clients

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

An impor­tant note:

Over the past 18 months, the quar­terly tem­plates for a client let­ter have ranked among the most pop­u­lar fea­tures on this site.

Research with investors has iden­ti­fied the five ele­ments of an effec­tive client let­ter. It has to be:

1. bal­anced in outlook

2. candid

3. short enough for clients to get through com­fort­ably but long enough to be substantial

4. sup­ported by facts

5. indica­tive of the advi­sors voice and personality

On this last point, if you like the basic struc­ture of the let­ter, you MUST take the time to cus­tomize it to your own phi­los­o­phy and out­look — I can’t empha­size this strongly enough.


April 12, 2010

“I have no idea what the stock mar­ket will do next month or six months from now. I do know that, over a period of time, the Amer­i­can econ­omy will do very well and investors who own a piece of it will do well.”

War­ren Buf­fet in an inter­view on CNBC on Fri­day, Octo­ber 10, 2008

After the mar­ket roller coaster of 2008 and 2009, the first quar­ter of 2010 has been bless­edly unevent­ful by com­par­i­son — the mar­kets ended the first quar­ter about where they started the year, although up almost 60% from their lows of a year ago.

That said, there is still a cloud of uncer­tainty that is mak­ing many investors nervous.

Causes for con­cern … and for optimism

Even with the sta­bi­liza­tion of the global econ­omy, there’s no short­age of short term causes of concern:

… con­tin­ued ques­tions on the direc­tion and tim­ing of the eco­nomic recov­ery in the United States and Europe

US hous­ing prices that are stay­ing stub­bornly low and unem­ploy­ment lev­els in North Amer­ica and Europe that are stub­bornly high.

… and in late March the deputy direc­tor of the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund made head­lines as he talked about the need for advanced economies to cut spend­ing in order to reduce deficits.

Here’s a New York Times arti­cle about the IMF’s views: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/business/global/22imf.html?scp=1&sq=lipsky%20imf&st=cse

The good news is that there are off­set­ting pos­i­tives, even if the media head­lines that fea­ture them aren’t quite as prominent:

… on Mon­day March 22, the Wall Street Jour­nal ran a story about div­i­dend hikes as a result of ris­ing prof­its by US com­pa­nies. The arti­cle also men­tioned that cash on hand on US cor­po­rate bal­ance sheets was at the high­est level since 2007.

… on the same day the Finan­cial Times ran a sim­i­lar story about div­i­dend increases in Europe

… and there’s grow­ing atten­tion to the impact that Germany’s empha­sis on man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity had in shel­ter­ing it from the worst of the eco­nomic down­turn — and ques­tions about whether  this might be a model for other coun­tries. In March the Econ­o­mist ran a 14 page fea­ture on how Ger­many posi­tioned itself for success.

Fore­cast­ing the future

Whether you choose to focus on the pos­i­tives or the neg­a­tives, there’s broad agree­ment that the steps taken by gov­ern­ments sta­bi­lized the finan­cial cri­sis that we were fac­ing a year ago — and there is almost no talk today of a global depression.

So the issue is not whether the econ­omy will recover, but when and at what rate –and whether there might be another stum­ble along the way.

If you look for invest­ing advice in the news­pa­per or on tele­vi­sion, the dis­cus­sion tends to revolve around what stocks will do well in the imme­di­ate period ahead … this week, this month, this quarter.

We refuse to par­tic­i­pate in that spec­u­la­tion — when it comes to short-term pre­dic­tions, whether about the econ­omy or the stock mar­ket, there’s one thing we can say with vir­tual cer­tainty: Most of them will be wrong.  Quite sim­ply, no one has a con­sis­tent track record of suc­cess­fully fore­cast­ing short term move­ments in the econ­omy and markets.

Which is why in uncer­tain times such as today, one of the peo­ple I look to for guid­ance is War­ren Buffett.

Advice from War­ren Buffett

In an invest­ment indus­try poll a cou­ple of years ago, War­ren Buf­fett was voted the great­est investor of all time; among the run­ners up were Peter Lynch, John Tem­ple­ton and George Soros.

Buffett’s returns are a tes­ti­mony to the power of com­pound­ing.  From 1965 to the end of 2009, the growth in book value of his invest­ments aver­aged 20% annu­ally. As a result, $10,000 invested in 1965 would cur­rently be worth a remark­able $40 mil­lion. By con­trast, that same $10,000 invested in the US stock mar­ket as a whole, return­ing just over 9% dur­ing this period, would be worth $540,000.

In one of his annual let­ters to share­hold­ers, War­ren Buf­fett wrote that it only takes two things to invest suc­cess­fully — hav­ing a sound plan and stick­ing to it. He went on to say that of these two, it’s the “stick­ing to it” part that investors strug­gle with the most. The quote at the top of the let­ter, made at the height of the finan­cial cri­sis, speaks to Buffett’s dis­ci­pline on this issue.

I try to apply that approach as well — putting a plan in place for each client that will meet their long term needs and mod­i­fy­ing it as cir­cum­stances war­rant, with­out walk­ing away from the plan itself.

Boom times such as we saw in the late 90’s and scary con­di­tions such as we’ve seen in the past two years can make that dif­fi­cult — but those con­di­tions can also rep­re­sent oppor­tu­nity. Indeed, in his most recent let­ter to share­hold­ers Buf­fett wrote that “a cli­mate of fear is an investor’s best friend.”

Five core prin­ci­ples that shape our approach

On bal­ance, I share War­ren Buffett’s mid term pos­i­tive out­look, not least because many of the pos­i­tives that drove mar­ket opti­mism two years ago are still in place, among these the con­tin­ued emer­gence of a global mid­dle class in devel­op­ing coun­tries like Brazil, China, India and Turkey. This edu­cated mid­dle class will fuel global growth that will make us all bet­ter off.

In the mean­time, here are five fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples that we look for in money man­agers and that  drive the port­fo­lios that we believe will serve clients well in the period ahead.

1. Con­cen­trate on quality

The record bounce in stock prices over the past year was led by com­pa­nies with the weak­est credit rat­ings. Some have referred to last year as a “junk rally”, with the low­est qual­ity com­pa­nies doing the best.  That’s unlikely to con­tinue– that’s why I’m focus­ing my port­fo­lios on only the high­est qual­ity com­pa­nies, those best able to with­stand the inevitable ups and downs in the economy.

2. Look to dividends

His­tor­i­cally, div­i­dends made up 40% of the total returns of invest­ing in stocks and have also helped pro­vide sta­bil­ity through mar­ket tur­bu­lence. Two years ago, qual­ity com­pa­nies pay­ing good div­i­dends were hard to find — one piece of good news is that today it’s pos­si­ble to build a port­fo­lio of good qual­ity com­pa­nies pay­ing div­i­dends of 3% and above.

3. Focus on valuations

Hav­ing a strong price dis­ci­pline on buy­ing and sell­ing stocks is para­mount to suc­cess — his­tory shows that the key to a suc­cess­ful invest­ment is ensur­ing that the pur­chase price is a fair one. Investors who bought mar­ket lead­ers Cisco Sys­tems, Intel and Microsoft ten years ago are still down down 40% to 70%, not because these aren’t great com­pa­nies but because the price paid was too high.

4. Build in a buffer

Given that we have to expect con­tin­ued volatil­ity, we iden­tify cash flow needs for the next three years for every client and ensure these are set aside in safe invest­ments. That buffer pro­tects clients from short term volatil­ity and reduces stress along the way.

5. Stick to your plan

In the face of eco­nomic and mar­ket uncer­tainty, another  key to suc­cess is hav­ing a diver­si­fied plan appro­pri­ate to your risk tol­er­ance — and then stick­ing to it. It can be hard to ignore the short-term dis­trac­tions, but ulti­mately that’s the only way to achieve your long term goals with a man­age­able amount of stress along the way.

In clos­ing, let me express my thanks for the con­tin­ued oppor­tu­nity to work together.  Should you ever have any ques­tions or if there’s any­thing you’d like to talk about, my team and I are always pleased to take your call.

Name of advisor

P.S. If you’re inter­ested, here’s a link to War­ren Buffett’s 2010 let­ter to investors:                        http://​www​.berk​shire​hath​away​.com/​l​e​t​t​e​r​s​/​2​0​0​9​l​t​r​.​pdf


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