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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”

(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”

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”

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”

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”

I get phone calls and messages almost everyday from different mutual fund wholesalers (and internals), calling to introduce themselves to me. On the off chance they get through to me, this is how the conversation goes typically:

1. First, they introduce themselves and their company… then…
2. they present a sales idea involving their mutual funds
3. finally, they want to know where their funds fit into my business.

Do you know what my answer is?

Continue Reading “A brief conversation about ETF’s”

Mutual funds make up such a broad segment of the financial services industry, its hard to know where to start.

I had all these ideas last night that I wanted to write about, but today as I sit here I realize I can’t possibly incorporate them all into one or two posts.

I think, instead, in a few weeks time I will dedicate an entire week to looking at the mutual funds industry. It’s really the only way I can do it justice.

When it comes to mutual funds, there are so many interesting things to write about, including uncovering some dirty little secrets. In fact, I’ll dedicate the same amount of time to the annuities business, as well.

I got a little excited, a little ahead of myself today. Consequently, I just changed the post title to the one you see. It went from ‘Understanding mutual funds’ to what you see up there now. Well, lets begin to scratch the surface on the mutual fund biz then…

(I’m going to assume you know the basics about mutual funds, if you don’t and want more information Click Here.)

Continue Reading “Scratching the surface on mutual funds”