We’ve all seen this on the front pages of magazine’s like Money and Kiplinger’s: “Five funds you need to buy now!”, or “The 50 Best Mutual Funds and ETF’s for 2018.” You may also be familiar with Morningstar’s star rating system where they rate a fund on a scale of 5 stars with 5 the highest. Advisors and consumers have relied on that star system for years to help them choose mutual fund managers. Does it really help? In 2017 the Wall Street Journal investigated the system and analyzed its predictive value; their result: Morningstar’s system is not particularly useful in predicting future performance. When they examined many 5-star funds they also discovered that many of the funds were small when they received a 5-star rating, with their high rating attracting many investors causing the fund to grow dramatically with ratings in future years falling. That might be evidence that many managers cannot invest the same way they did when they were small or that their performance might have been based originally on a few lucky picks.

A case in point is the Fairholme fund, Fairholme invests in US stock independent of size, and they seem to be all over the map over the years, investing in large, midcap and small cap at various times. (Full disclosure we use to use this fund). For years it outperformed its peers by a wide margin (13% per year), then suddenly it experienced a terrible year in 2011. That year the fund lost over 32% while the S&P index gained 2%. (Around the same time Morningstar named Fairholme fund of the year). Now if you compare Fairholme to the S&P 500 index, the Russell Midcap Index and Russell 2000 it has severely underperformed all of them:

Since their focus on company size has been variable we think it is fair to compare them to these three indices.
So how can you tell a manager’s performance is really based on skill? (Something you would have wanted to know about the manager of Fairholme in 2010 when they seemed to be crushing most equity indices). There are ways to analyze their performance using statistics. Comparing a manager’s performance against various indices provides useful information regarding their investment approach (this is called style analysis). You can then compare their performance against a “synthetic” fund that is composed of those indices. Using the composition of the fund and comparing it to a combination of index funds that would match that composition some have concluded that it would take at least 18-20 years to determine if Fairholme’s out performance (before 2011) was manager skill or luck. For some funds with a more volatile track record it might take as long as 100 years before it can be shown with a high degree of certainty that a fund’s performance is based on skill.

Active managers also have some headwinds when compared to an index fund: the low expense ratio and greater tax efficiency of most index funds. Most actively managed funds have expense rations in the .8-1.2% range annually while most index funds are in the .1-.35% range. Just to match an index the fund manager has to automatically outperform it by .7% or more, a high hurdle. That combined with the fact that Index funds tend to be more tax efficient means that at the beginning of every year a fund manager has to beat an index by over 1% on average just to justify their existence.

Over the years we have gradually concluded that it is easy to try to find a fund that seems to have beaten the market but it is hard to find one whose performance can be proven to be skill and not luck. Because of this we mainly use funds and ETF’s that are index based or based on a strategy that is not an attempt by a manager to “beat” the market but is instead based on a mechanistic strategy. A strategy meant to capture a certain risk vs. return component of the market or a particular exposure that fits into our client’s overall asset allocation.

Choosing a financial planner or advisor can be a daunting task, especially if you are faced with trying to determine how they are paid, how competent they are, and what credentials are actually important. Let’s discuss each of those “three C’s.”

Compensation

Advisors may be paid through commissions, fees or a combination of both. When an advisor “sells” you a financial product like a mutual fund or an insurance policy they are paid by the insurance company or brokerage firm that “creates” the product. Some advisors are only paid by you; they may charge you for a detailed analysis of their finances and/or they may charge you a percent of any investments they manage for you. There are also advisors that both receive commissions and also are paid by you (“fee-based”) for a plan or for asset management. Whomever you hire, it is important to understand how they are paid since it might (but not always) affect the types of advice you receive. An advisor that charges for a plan or an asset management fee and cannot receive commissions is generally considered a “fiduciary.” A fiduciary is someone that works for you and must legally act in your best interests not their own. Generally, advisors that are compensated this way and act as “fiduciaries” have the fewest conflicts. They should be diligent in disclosing to you any conflicts that might still exist and how they will either avoid the situation that leads to the conflict or how they will “manage” it.

(CFP® certificants will be required to act in your best interests for financial advice regardless of their method of compensation beginning in October 2019.)

With fee-only advisors you always know the cost of the relationship since you pay them directly, with commission based advisors you may not have a clue since sadly there is no requirement that they disclose how much they earn from products they might sell you.

Competency

How can you tell your advisor is competent? It sure is difficult but there are some things to consider. First do they have a certification? There are plenty of advisors out there who do not, yet they have official sounding titles like “wealth advisor.” We’ll describe the education and certification that real advisors should have below. Besides having a designation or certification you may want to drill in on the advisor’s core competency by asking some pointed questions, including “how many years experience do you have,” and “what are your specialties?” Make sure the advisor has formal training in areas they claim as specialties. You may want to ask to view a sample analysis they did for a client (any advisor should have a sample with names changed or blacked out). When you look at the sample plan make sure it has at least the following sections:

• Planning Assumptions
• Clients goals
• Detailed analysis with backup and discussion
• Detailed recommendations with a discussion of the potential impact of the recommendations and tradeoffs among various recommendations
• Action item list with due dates

That is just a partial list. Not all advisors will have competency in every area so it is important to discover how they deal with that. For example, Fee-Only advisors cannot sell products but they may recommend you purchase more life or disability insurance. Do they have a list of trusted outside experts that they work with? Does that list include attorneys, insurance agents, and possibly accountants?

There is one membership organization that has pretty specific requirements for their members, that is the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA). Their members are required to:

• Submit a financial plan for peer review
• Be CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™s (CFP®)
• Take 60 hours of continuing education every 2 years (the highest requirement in the industry).
• Adhere to a strict requirement that they be fee-only and act as fiduciaries in every circumstance. In fact they sign an oath compelling them to act as fiduciaries in every circumstance.

While even those strict requirements are not a guarantee that the advisor is competent it does certainly increase the chances that they are prepared to properly assist you.

Credentials

The financial planning field is saddled with a plethora of titles and supposed certifications. It seems as if this is meant to make things more confusing for the consumer who is trying to get good advice. We suggest you ignore all titles like “wealth manager” or “financial consultant” and instead ask what actual education and certifications the person has. While many certifications exist the most important are the ones that require a broad background in many aspects of financial planning. There are two that fit that bill, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ (CFP®) and Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC). The CFP® designation is more widely known and it requires that certificants take a comprehensive exam, and a course that requires them to actually write a financial plan. The CFP® designation is owned and awarded by the CFP® board a non-profit organization that protects the mark and also sets high standards for the behavior of its certificants. The ChFC requires more course work but it’s certificants do not have to take a comprehensive exam, they do have to write a financial plan though.

The CFP® board has adopted a very strong set of ethical requirements for their certificants including a new requirement that they act as Fiduciaries whenever they are providing financial advice (beginning October 2019). That strong requirement does not exist for ChFC certificants.

You may encounter many advisors with both designations. You may also encounter advisors who have continued their education and received an advanced degree in the field including a Masters or PhD. Advisors who have done that should be considered the educational “elite” in the field.

One other designation worth mentioning is the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) which is owned and awarded by the CFA Institute. While the designation is only focused on investment analysis and management, advisors who hold the designation have acquired very deep knowledge in that specialty. The designation requires that applicants pass 3 exams that are roughly 6 hours in length and the course material includes statistics, economics, investment analysis, portfolio management, etc. Roughly 8-15% of candidates actually finish and receive the designation. Like the CFP® designation certificants are required to adhere to a very strict set of ethical standards. If you are hiring an advisor to help manage your portfolio this designation is important.

Conclusion

We suggest you consider advisors who are fee-only, act as fiduciaries and hold the CFP® or ChFC designation as a minimum.

Estate planning for families that include children from parents who have been married a couple of times can be complex. Sometimes ensuring that all the children are treated fairly means you may need to take measures to protect their inheritance if you die prematurely. Your current spouse may not have any emotional tie to them so they could disinherit them either innocently or with malice.

Consider the following example of a husband and wife who both have children from prior marriages and have a child together:

Consider the following:

• If John predeceases Mary: Assume Mary has no affection for or relationship with John’s children from his prior marriage. At her death, she leaves them out of her will, and they are left with nothing from John, (who had a simple “I love you” will that left everything to Mary). They are effectively disinherited through a bad sequence of events and poor planning unless their mother Sue (who may or may not have much of an estate) leaves them something. Or if Sue is married and leaves everything to her new husband he could leave everything to someone else effectively leaving no inheritance for John and Sue’s children. This means that things John (and possibly Sue) might have worked hard for never benefit their own children from their marriage.
• If Mary predeceases John: John remarries, he marries a much younger woman who outlives him; since Mary left everything to John, her child from her first marriage could be disinherited if John leaves everything to his new wife who will most likely out live him. Or his younger wife could still care enough about Mary’s son that she does leave him something but John’s young wife may live for many more years meaning any inheritance Mary’s son would have received may be delayed for 20-30 years.

Those are just two of many possible sequences of events. While every scenario cannot be anticipated some estate planning techniques can reduce the risk that someone’s children are not left out in the cold. Here are two.

QTIP Trust (Qualified Terminal Interest Property) – Is a testamentary (created through a will at someone’s death) trust used by married couples to control the disposition of assets in their estate after the death of their spouse. John’s will would create the trust and specify which assets that he owns individually will be in the trust. Assets he leaves to the trust will qualify for the unlimited marital deduction if his executor makes a QTIP election on his estate tax return. A requirement for those assets to qualify for the unlimited marital deduction is that his wife Mary must receive all the income generated by the assets for the remainder of her life. The assets in the trust will also be counted as part of her gross estate at her death. John though has designated who will receive the assets at his wife Mary’s death and that choice is irrevocable. Using this estate planning technique, he can make sure that his children are never disinherited.

Mary can also include this type of trust in her will to protect her the legacy of her son from her first marriage.

Unfortunately, a QTIP trust is not the most appropriate technique if a person has the bulk of their assets in IRA’s, 401K’s, or other qualified types of accounts that will become subject to the Required Minimum Distribution rule. The reason is complex and related to the requirements that all income from the assets in a QTIP trust be distributed to the remaining spouse every year. The definition of income for an IRA may clash with the definition of income under some state’s rules regarding trusts.

Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT) – Another and perhaps more appropriate method of protecting children in a mixed family circumstance is life insurance combined with an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT). Here a trust is created while the spouse is living (unlike a QTIP which is typically created at death through a will). The trustee of the ILIT applies for life insurance on the life of the spouse and the trust owns the policy, the spouse pays the policy premium each year by gifting funds to the trust. The trust is created for the benefit of whomever the spouse selects, in this case possibly a child. At the death of the spouse the life insurance is paid to the trust which may then invest the proceeds and pay the income to the child, provide them with rights to the principle under certain conditions (maintenance, education, support, or health) and perhaps gradually pay the corpus out to them at specific ages (25, 30, 35, for example). This type of trust has other benefits including protection of the assets from the child’s creditors. This is a short and simple summary of this type of trust which could accomplish many of a parent’s goals for the protection or creation of a legacy for their children, one not affected by remarriages. It does come at a cost though, the cost of life insurance and the requirement that the spouse be insurable. It is also recommended that the spouse consider setting this trust up when they are younger and the cost of life insurance is less.

Here is a summary of the 2 approaches:

This is a brief non-technical summary of a couple of approaches to consider if you do have children from prior marriages.

Stephen Craffen MS, CFA, ChFC

Retirement should be the time when you are less stressed and should have fewer worries, after all you no longer have the stress of the commute or your job. Many find those worries replaced with others including fears they might run out of money or be forced into a diminished lifestyle. Those fears are justified; inflation increases your expenses and diminishes the value of any fixed income you receive, health care costs are a great unknown, or you may live much longer than predicted increasing the chance you could outlive your resources. Guarding against some of those dangers by having the correct mix of assets to provide enough growth without taking on excessive risk may be challenging.

The risk that you might outlive your assets may be dramatically increased if you happen to retire at the “wrong” time. What happens for example if your timing is poor and you just happen to retire before a market decline?  What does that mean for your portfolio? A declining market combined with the withdrawals you may need to make to create that “retirement paycheck” will put a severe strain on your portfolio and dramatically increase the odds that you may run out of money especially if you live for 20 or more years in retirement.

This risk, commonly called “Sequence Risk” or order of return risk (bad timing combined with withdrawals), is a risk that can devastate the portfolio of retirees.

An example will make it much clearer:

If you retired in 1996 and had a portfolio of $100,000 all invested in an S&P 500 index you would have experienced the following sequence of returns.

• 1996 – 23.10%
• 1997 – 33.40%
• 1998 – 28.60%
• 1999 – 21.00%
• 2000 –   (9.10%)
• 2001 – (11.90%)
• 2002 – (22.10%)
• 2003 – 28.70%
• 2004 – 10.90%
• 2005 –   4.90%

If you were withdrawing $6,000 per year to meet your income needs in retirement your portfolio would have grown to $162,548 and your withdrawals would have been $60,000 for a total of $222,548.

Now consider an alternative universe where the order of returns is reversed as follows:

• 1996 –   4.90%
• 1997 – 10.90%
• 1998 – 28.70%
• 1999 – (22.10%)
• 2000 – (11.90%)
• 2001 –  (9.10%)
• 2002 – 21.00%
• 2003 – 28.60%
• 2004 – 33.4%%
• 2005 – 23.10%

With the same $100,000 portfolio and annual withdrawal of $6,000 your portfolio would be worth $125,691, combined with the $60,000 in annual withdrawals it totals only $185,691. Now the $6,000 withdrawal represents 4.8% of your portfolio instead of 3.7% in the original scenario. If you were not making withdrawals the sequence would not have mattered, your portfolio would be worth the same with either pattern of returns, $238,673. There is no impact if you are not making withdrawals. (People in the “accumulation” phase of their life may benefit from dollar cost averaging.) It is the timing of the withdrawals that particularly impacts prospects for your invested assets. Selling an asset that has declined in price dramatically limits your ability to capture the upside during market recoveries. Managing sequence risk means you need to try to avoid the sale of asset classes that are in the throes of a bear market. Here are some suggestions:

Have enough in fixed income (bonds) –  If you have a portfolio of $1,000,000 and need to withdraw $40,000 each year, have enough in bonds to guarantee the $40,000 is available for 7-8 years in case a bear market is very severe. That means having no more than 70% of your portfolio in riskier, growth assets.

Reduce your withdrawal rate –  Manage your discretionary expenses so you can reduce the demands on your portfolio until the market recovers. There are various rules based approaches we’ve studied.

Have more recurring income through your Social Security claiming strategy or by buying immediate income annuities –  Delaying Social Security till age 70 may dramatically increase your monthly income. Turning some of your portfolio into a steady income stream by annuitizing it can enable you to invest differently since you know you have a safe income floor.

Consider a Reverse Mortgage –  Establish a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) early on in retirement to act as a backup source of funds to tap during market declines.

We will discuss these strategies in future blogs.

Understanding your exposure to “Sequence Risk” and having a strategy to overcome it may be critical to your retirement.

Stephen C. Craffen, CFA

Interest rates have been low for years, dramatically impacting anyone who must hold a large position in cash.  There may be several reasons why you need to hold a large cash position, perhaps you have some anticipated large expense looming, or you need to have a large cash reserve for an emergency. You might have thousands of dollars in cash, earning .25% in a money market account. Can you earn more?

Here are some of the investments you might consider and why they may not be good choices.

Floating Rate Loan funds – are funds that invest in bank loans, very often those that are below investment grade. Right now, some of these funds have yields that range from 4-6%, a huge improvement over a money market fund. Unfortunately, these types of funds are subject to more risk than one would expect. In 2008 when markets were crashing some of these funds also declined in value by 25-30%. During a financial crisis, the default rate for the loans these funds hold can also skyrocket and impact return. Exposure to that amount of risk is not what you want for your cash reserves.

High Yield Bond funds – High yield bonds are generally considered to be bonds that are rated BB or lower by S&P or Ba by Moody’s. They have historically provided high income over the years. Like every other class of bond, yields are now low when compared to their historical yield; yet their risk has not decreased. Like floating rate loan funds, in 2008 high yield bond’s return was -28%, illustrating how risky this asset class is during economic slowdowns or financial crises. Like floating rate loans their default rate also tends to rise dramatically during recessions.

Longer Term Bond ETF’s – May have a much higher yield than a money market account but they come with much greater risk not from defaults (for government bond funds or high-quality corporate’s) but instead from increasing interest rates. The market value of the bonds they hold can be quite sensitive to interest rate changes. For example, Vanguard’s Long-Term Government Bond ETF (VGLT) lost 1.8% for the prior year ending 5/31/2017. That includes it’s yield which is around 2.7% right now.  If interest rates rise long term bond funds can easily have negative returns as high as 6% in one year, since the bonds they buy may decline in value that much or more for each 1% increase in interest rates.

Preferred Stock Funds – Companies may issue several classes of stock including common stock and preferred stock. Preferred stock is issued with a fixed and typically high dividend, right now yields are in the 4-6% range. If a company is liquidated preferred shareholders receive whatever is left after bond holders are reimbursed but before common stockholders. Preferred stock has much of the risk of common stock since it is effectively an unsecured debt (unlike a bond) but it lacks the potential for growth since the dividend is fixed and the preferred stock may also be callable. Because of these features we do not believe it is a good investment for most people. In a bad market, preferred stock acts like common stock. In one case, an ETF that invests in preferred stock dropped 61% from May 2007 to March 2009.

While this list is not complete, we hope we’ve given you a feel for the risks you may encounter in trying to get more yield.  You increase your exposure to types of risk that generally do not exist with a money market account. Those risks in summary include, market risk, interest rate risk, and default risk. When we consider these options, I recall something a professor wrote on the black board when I was getting my Masters in Finance: TINSTAAFL. None of us could guess what the heck that meant until he told us: There Is No Such Thing as A Free Lunch.

Stephen Craffen