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Advisor Weekly News Wrap

April 21, 2013 by mark Leave a Comment

It was a wild week, with a critical vote on gun legislation, bombing and a manhunt in Boston, deadly explosion in Texas, gold tanking, and stocks suffering the worst week of 2013, with all three major indexes dropping more than 2%. Tax filing deadline passed on Monday but a MarketWatch story cautions you to save your tax records forever. That’s a long time, and a lot of paper to lug around.

How Healthy Are You?

The Russell Advisor Health Index claims to be “a single score that allows you to compare your business to other firms to help you gain insight into the health of your practice.” I wonder how advisors rate themselves, how they compare to others, and how useful this Index is?

Tactical Investment Strategy

Steve Blumenthal, CEO, CMG Capital Management Group: Modern Portfolio Theory is alive and well. The problem is that most portfolios do not include a broad enough set of important risk diversifiers and far too many individual investors chase into and out of the stock and bond market.

60/40 is not diversified in a low yield, low dividend, relatively high PE valuation world, yet those asset categories are important within the construct of a broadly diversified investment portfolio and the risks can be inexpensively hedged from time to time.

To me, a balanced portfolio today is composed of 33% Equity (hedged from time to time), 33% Fixed Income (tactically managed) and 34% Tactical-Trading-Alternatives. Of course, you may allocate differently based on your risk level, age, needs, time horizon, etc. See Steve Blumenthal’s 2013 Portfolio Construction Game Plan.

Precious Metals

Miguel Perez-Santalla, VP of BullionVault, is quoted in USA Today: Gold badly tarnished, sees biggest drop in 30 years. Also, see Miguel’s piece on Putting gold into your IRA retirement savings.

The Top 50 Wealth Managers

The biggest, fastest growing and the emerging talent, according to Forbes. See which firms top this year’s lists.

This Week’s Video

Investors are taking lots of money off the sidelines, embracing more risk and changing their taste in bonds. Dow Jones Adviser.

Filed Under: Financial Planning, Investments, Wealth Management, Weekly News Wrap, Weekly PR Advisor Tagged With: BullionVault, CMG Capital Management Group, gold, Russell Investments, Steve Blumenthal

Precious Metals Investing Course at FPA in NYC

April 12, 2013 by mark Leave a Comment

The Financial Planning Association of New York presents Precious Metal Markets: Education for Investing, Wednesday, April 17, 8:30 – 10:00 AM, New York University – Midtown Center (across from Bryant Park), 11 West 42nd Street (Between 5th and 6th Avenue). 1.5 CFP® CE Credits with the CFP Board of Standards are applied to this course.

Gold is in the news every day. The last few years it has hit record highs and is still at record highs against other currencies. The global financial crisis has spurred high interest in precious metals. Come and learn about how the markets work, its fundamentals and where the private investor fits in. You will also learn about what products are available and what should be considered before making an investment decision. Audience participation is encouraged.

Miguel Perez-Santalla presents the course. Miguel is Vice-President of Business Development at BullionVault, an online gold and silver exchange holding over $2.2 billion of precious metals for more than 46,000 customers in 159 countries.

Filed Under: Investments Tagged With: BullionVault, Financial Planning Association, gold

Advisor Weekly News Wrap

April 7, 2013 by mark Leave a Comment

Equities

The U.S. equity market (represented by the Russell 3000® Index) started strong, up 11%, buoyed by improvement in the labor market and positive housing data. Returns varied across asset classes and sectors in the first quarter of the year. See the Russell Investments First Quarter Market Review: Strong Start, What’s Next.

Gold

Writes Miguel Perez-Santalla on PreciousMetalsLife.com: “With the recent drop of the precious metals prices and the continued media negativity on gold one would think that the public would be selling. However, the BullionVault exchange, with over 46,000 customers, has experienced double its usual activity in recent weeks with net buyers of both silver and gold. I believe this is an indication of the lack of confidence that the public has in our recovery.” See Unemployment Surprise! Gold in Recovery.

Tactical Rotation Strategy

The world remains uniquely out of balance. It’s critical to focus on risk management now. See On My Radar: Thoughts on Cyprus & France by Stephen Blumenthal, CEO of CMG Capital Management Group.

Insurance

With the April 15 deadline for filing tax returns fast approaching, financial advisers face a deluge of tax returns involving substantial gifts — a vestige of clients’ giving spree due to their tax uncertainty late last year. See Giving spree seen complicating taxes by Darla Mercado, InvestmentNews.

Exec Moves

National Advisors Trust Appoints New CEO. National Advisors Trust Company is the largest independent, RIA-owned trust company in the nation with more than $8 billion in assets under administration. James Combs Jr. has been named CEO. Combs was previously chief operations officer for SEI Investment Manager Services. Combs also held numerous executive positions at Wilmington Trust Company, Wachovia Operational Services Corporation, Global Processing Alliance and Bankers Trust Company.

TD Ameritrade Institutional Names Director of Advisor Transitions. Scott Collins was previously CEO of FirstPoint Partners and SVP of business development at LPL Financial .

Filed Under: Investments Tagged With: CMG Capital Management Group, gold, InvestmentNews, LPL Financial, markets, National Advisors Trust, Russell Investments, TD Ameritrade, Wachovia

CMG Tactical Rotation Investment Strategy Now Available To Advisors on Multiple Platforms

April 7, 2013 by mark Leave a Comment

CMG Capital Management Group, Inc.’s Tactical Rotation Strategy is now available to advisors on Separately Managed Account Platforms at Trust Company of America (TCA), TD Ameritrade (direct) and PlaceMark Investments. Other platforms are scheduled to offer CMG’s Tactical Rotation Strategy shortly.

The strategy seeks to provide absolute returns across various market environments. It allocates the portfolio to the top two asset classes from a universe of six – domestic equities, international equities, bonds, commodities, REITs and cash. The strategy makes investment allocation decisions monthly. Once the portfolio is allocated, the positions are held and monitored for the entire month.

CMG has $424 million AUM, as of 3/31/2013, in tactically managed accounts for individuals and advisors. CMG investment strategies are also available in a Variable Annuity through Jefferson National.

“In this market it’s better to have a large core allocation to tactical trading strategies that can trade uptrends and downtrends, without focusing on a long directional bias,” said Stephen Blumenthal (right), founder and CEO of CMG Capital Management Group, Inc. “Our exclusive tactical investment model analyzes several factors that help us re-deploy assets for defensive positions or tactical opportunities. With interest rates at unprecedented lows, world economies in turmoil, and the U.S. in a tenuous recovery, flexibility is critical in developing investment portfolios. Our philosophy is to have targeted bets, but have a large core that has the flexibility to be defensive and to trade in different directions.”

Filed Under: Investments, Wealth Management Tagged With: CMG Capital Management Group, Steve Blumenthal

Blumenthal on the Fed and Tactical Investing

March 28, 2013 by mark Leave a Comment

Steve Blumenthal, CMG Capital Management Group CEO, joined Markets Hub at the WSJ Live to talk about the Fed and tactical investment strategies. See video below or on WSJ Live: Markets Ask: Will the Fed Pull it Off?.

CMG Capital Management Group has approximately $432 million AUM in tactically managed accounts for individuals and advisors. CMG investment strategies are also available in a Variable Annuity through Jefferson National.

Excerpt from Steve’s comments:

It’s better to have a very large core allocation to tactical trading strategies that can trade up trends and down trends that aren’t focused on a long directional bias. The long directional bias around the corner is another 20 – 30% correction. I’m not sure when that’s going to be. You don’t want to fight the Fed, but at some point the unwind behind this is very troublesome, and the interest rate and inflation pressures are stealing from retirees portfolios.

Have targeted bets but have a large core that has the flexibility to be defensive and to trade in different directions.

Filed Under: Clients in News, Investments, Wealth Management Tagged With: CMG Capital Management Group, Steve Blumenthal

Capital Gains Reporting Tips for Tax Time

March 27, 2013 by mark Leave a Comment

Less than 3 weeks to tax time. MarketWatch’s Jim Jelter offers four valuable tips for handling the 1099s from brokerages and investment houses to report capital gains tax.

Filed Under: Investments, Wealth Management Tagged With: taxes

Are Advisors Going Mobile?

February 28, 2013 by mark Leave a Comment

The majority of advisers now carry a smartphone and tablet with them almost everywhere they go. But the truly innovative advisers are using their mobile devices to do more than just check email. InvestmentNews TV reports from the 2013 T3 Conference. Fidelity says it’s had 15K downloads of its mobile apps for advisors. Advisors are staying in touch with clients, checking status and markets through mobile apps. Transactions are not happening yet through mobile but we’re heading there. It’s inevitable. Any advisors having success with mobile apps?

Filed Under: Practice Management Tagged With: Fidelity, mobile technology

Trends in Wealth Management

February 26, 2013 by mark Leave a Comment

Kevin Noblet, managing editor of WSJ Wealth Management, discusses two key trends in wealth management. Expect continued growth of independent advisors, taking market share from big brokerages. All the big wirehouses have been delivering high, steady revenue recently, but they have not yet figured out how to deal with the steady growth of independent advisors. Pardon the brief lead-in advertisement to this video.

Filed Under: Practice Management, Wealth Management

CMG Capital Management Group on theStreet

February 22, 2013 by mark Leave a Comment

Steve Blumenthal, CEO of CMG Capital Management Group, spoke to Gregg Greenberg at theStreet about why the old 60/40 asset allocation model isn’t a good bet in today’s environment.

We are in an investment environment that offers historically low traditional investment returns. Today, the projected return on the traditional 60/40 model is the lowest in 140 years at 4.26% (excluding management fees), according to Research Affiliates, LLC.

Instead, Blumenthal and CMG favor a tactically managed 33/33/34 strategy that combines many non correlating risk diversifiers to smooth the return stream for investors by managing risk while enhancing returns.

Blumenthal favors 33/33/34 as a better definition of a balanced portfolio today. Enhanced Modern Portfolio Theory didn’t fail the last 12 years; the failure occurred in the construction process. The risks were too concentrated because the solutions were unavailable to most investors. Today the solutions exist for all investors, and advisors.

See the full segment with Steve Blumenthal on theStreet: Here’s Why Your Old Asset Allocation Isn’t Working.

Filed Under: Clients in News, Investments Tagged With: asset allocation, CMG Capital Management Group

About mark

Advisor Weekly News Wrap

Precious Metals Investing Course at FPA in NYC