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Sometimes I come across prospective clients that want to work with me, but don’t want to be charged advisory fees.

Either they are the kind of people that have an aversion to being charged any kind of fees or they’ve had a bad experience, after being charged a lot of commissions, somewhere in their investing past.

Inevitably, I still want to convert them to my way of thinking. I will go through the whole process of why I believe an ETF fee based approach is the best way to build an investment portfolio, but much of what I say will go in one ear and out the other.

(Please note I’m generally wary of these type of people and may not take them on as clients, as I understand my approach may not be for everyone)

Continue Reading “Trying to fight the good fight”

If you read the last post, C shares and how they fit into my business, then some of the bullet points on this list will look awfully familiar to you. If you’ve read 10 things about A shares or 10 things about B shares, then again, some of the points will look eerily similar.

In case you missed it, about 5% of my client investment allocations are made up of Class C share mutual funds. So when it comes to mutual funds, its obvious that C shares are my favorite. That’s C as in Ciaran.

Continue Reading “10 things you need to know about Class C share mutual funds”

(I feel the need to write this post before getting to the top 10 things you need to know about Class C shares because I think its important to be as transparent as possible, especially, when writing about a product class that I use in my business.)

In a previous post back in July, I mentioned that sometimes I use C share mutual funds to build client portfolios. C shares make up less than 2% of my business, with the overwhelming majority of my client portfolios using ETF’s.

But, from time to time, I do come across prospective clients that don’t want ETF’s, for whatever the reason. Sometimes a prospect is fee conscious or is just very comfortable with mutual funds (usually the 2 characteristics go together).

Continue Reading “C shares and how they fit into my business”

There has been quite a bit of controversy surrounding Class B shares in the last few years.

The NASD and SEC are taking a very close look at advisors that do a lot of B share business; attempting to determine whether or not the B share investment recommendation(s) are in the best interest of the client or the advisor.

Since there is such a firestorm over this issue, my top 10 list will have a strong bend towards addressing some of these concerns. Without further ado…

Continue Reading “10 things you need to know about Class B share mutual funds”

Included in this list are some cold hard facts about Class A shares, along with some tactics you really need to watch out for when purchasing an A share mutual fund.

I feel like I need a drum roll here for my first Top Ten list, a la David Letterman.

10 things you need to know about Class A share mutual funds:

Continue Reading “10 things you need to know about Class A share mutual funds”

In some circles people refer to mutual fund share classes as alphabet soup. Why?

Because some fund families have lots of share classes beginning with A, B, C, some even have D, I, M, Y etc. It can look alot like the letters floating in a nice big bowl of hearty Campbell’s soup.

On a more serious note, people often ask me to explain to them why mutual funds have different share classes?

Continue Reading “Opening the conversation on mutual fund share classes”

Well today marks my triumphant return to the blog after a month away from the keys. All I can say is its good to be back and back with a vengeance.

I’ve spent the last few weeks cleaning up the blog and have made significant strides in resolving most of the technical issues that stopped me in my tracks. Like everything else in the universe, Chance favors will continue to evolve over time.

Lets get down to business…

Many posts ago I talked about offering up a series of posts on mutual funds. Well, I’d like to pick it up there. Over the next few days I will be offering a lot of information on the topic, as well as, links to other sites where you can get even more pertinent information.

Continue Reading “A Cost Comparison- The Real Cost of Mutual Funds v ETF’s”

What should an investor do, opt for a passive investment strategy or go with a more aggressive actively managed strategy?

This is a tough question to answer and the debate will rage on and on and on and on. There are alot of powerful interests, with alot of money, on both sides of this debate, both fighting tooth and nail to debunk the other.

For the better part of three decades, from the early 1970’s through the 1990’s, actively traded mutual funds ruled the roost (this was really the only game in town)

Emergence of ETF’s

In the last 10 years the investing landscape has changed dramatically, with stiff competition now coming from ETF’s. Actively managed funds are competing for their livelihood, with ETF’s capturing an ever increasing share of their market. What does that tell you?

Continue Reading “Active Investing v Passive Investing? It’s a secondary decision in my book”

Yesterday one of the things I wrote about was the tax efficiency of ETF’s. Well, I wanted to add a bit more to that today, since I found a compelling little graph that highlights the power behind having tax efficient investments.

The burden of taxes is receiving more attention in recent years, particularly when it comes to the impact of taxes on portfolio performance. This is particularly so, with actively managed funds, where high turnover and potentially greater tax liabilities can really eat into returns. I will talk more to these points during mutual fund week, coming soon. (I wrote a post on the future of US tax rates too)

Continue Reading “Understanding the Tax Efficiency of ETF’s”

As I’ve stated before, I use ETF’s (Exchange Traded Funds) to construct the majority of our client portfolios. I started using ETF’s in the early 2000’s and have never looked back.

Since then, many different companies have brought 100’s of new ETF’s to the marketplace.

These days, there is no shortage of ETF’s to choose from… you can build a wonderfully diversified portfolio, using ETF’s of different sizes, styles, asset classes– from international ETF’s to a specific emerging marketplace (i.e. Brazil, Russia, South Korea, etc.)

So without further ado here’s 5 reasons I love ETF’s:

Continue Reading “5 reasons I love ETF’s”