How Many Pages Of Regulations Does It Take To Create A Loophole?

How Many Pages Of Regulations Does It Take To Create A Loophole?

I’ll start with the answer: 771 pages. That’s the size of the new “Regulation Best Interest: The Broker-Dealer Standard of Conduct” rule just approved by the SEC. Why did the SEC feel we needed this legislation? It’s a long story. After the 1929 collapse of the U.S. stock market and the subsequent Great Depression of…
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How Not To Compare An Annuity To A Bond

My elderly uncle is convinced that annuities are better than bonds because the annuity will not only pay more on a monthly basis than a similar bond investment but would also keep paying over the remainder of his lifetime. While that’s true, it doesn’t tell the whole story. I’m writing this article to share a…
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Why Would You Want to Beat the Market?

I attended a large foundation’s investment committee meeting the other day to learn about their investment strategy. One of the managers they utilize for large cap U.S. stock investments was there to talk about their methodology for achieving better returns over time than standard market benchmarks such as the S&P 500. In brief, they explained…
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Should You Invest in IPOs?

Since the beginning of this year we’ve seen a number of spectacular first-day gains among Initial Public Offerings (IPOs). Lyft rose 21% before closing with a gain of 9%. Pinterest soared 25% but was overshadowed by Levi Strauss’ 31% advance. And even those impressive returns pale in comparison to Zoom, which – true to its…
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Investors Keep Trying To Time Markets

Of all the schemes stock market investors have come up with to try to avoid losses and/or to beat the market, market timing is probably one of the least effective. Simply put, it requires the ability to identify some kind of trigger that enables you to sell your holdings before prices drop, then subsequently finding…
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Why Don’t Millennials Like Stocks?

I previously posted about a Bankrate financial security survey in 2017 which found that real estate was the Millennial Generation’s top investment preference over stocks and cash (https://www.cognizantwealth.com/2017/11/24/is-real-estate-best-for-building-wealth/). The post pointed out that real estate as an investment had actually underperformed stocks over many periods since 1900, suggesting that millennials’ expectations of the best long-term…
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