(New York)

Breaking away is a tense process for advisors. Not only is there the emotional “fear gap” about venturing into the unknown, but even considering the move is difficult. One of the major reasons why is that it is hard to know how much your comp might increase or what kind of deal you might get for moving. Advisors often ask themselves “what does my business need to look like in order to make a successful move?”. Well, here is some insight. Larger firms, say with $5m+ plus in revenue can easily afford to make the transition and hire all the consultants necessary to make a successful switch. However, the less known reality is that even solo advisors with between $50m to $100m in AUM can be very successful in moving. Payouts for such advisors can approach 80%, meaning those bringing in $500k of revenue can reasonably hope to keep $400k of it. As a rule of thumb, advisors’ take-home pay usually jumps 10-15 percentage points when breaking away from a wirehouse.

FINSUM: This is very useful information. We drew it from a number of sources, including Kitces.

(New York)

JP Morgan finished 2019 on a bang and was a great stock all year. It rose by a market-beating 42% over the course of the year despite worries over the economy and declining interest rates. This has led some to think the bank’s stock is overpriced, but many, like RBC believe it will continue to rise. The bank has what is considered a “fortress” balance sheet and it has done a great job diversifying its revenue streams so that its earnings are smoother. Jamie Dimon has no plans to retire.

FINSUM: Aside from its well balanced revenue streams (47% from consumer and community banking, 31% from its corporate and investment bank), the bank is also making a bigger push into wealth management, which could start helping the stock.

(New York)

Goldman Sachs was the stock of the year in 2019. It was the best performing stock in the Dow, gaining more than 37% in the year. The bank started the year poorly with its 1MDB scandal, but as the year went on, David Solomon’s (the bank’s new CEO) leadership started to help the stock. The bank settled the issues and its earnings improved. It also made a large push into consumer finance as part of an effort to diversify its business and become a “modern, digital consumer bank”. The bank, through “Marcus”, its new consumer lending unit, is offering consumer savings products, while Goldman itself is partnering with Apple on the company’s new credit card.

FINSUM: In our view, Goldman’s stock price outlook is very linked to the big new push it is making in consumer finance. Its core business will likely continue to perform as it has, so the real difference maker will be its new business lines and the success of its “modernization”.

(New York)

For around a year now, the yield curve has been scaring investors. The inversion of the curve sent a grave warning sign to the market that a recession may be on its way. Many investors fled the market for fear of a big reversal. However, as we enter 2020, the yield curve is sending a very different signal—optimism. The curve is at its steepest level since October 2018, showing investors’ increasing confidence in the US economy. One CIO described the situation this way, saying “If the stock market is right that everything is amazing, I don’t see how long rates can stay as low as they are … The stock market is rallying on hope. Hope that things will inflect higher with this trade deal and Fed accommodation”.

FINSUM: If there is one thing we have learned in the last decade, it is that the Fed does not want to over-hike on rates. Overall, we think this is a very healthy direction for yields.

(New York)

It should not be this easy to beat the Dow, but it is. In the last ten years, investors could have used a very simple strategy to outperform the index by a significant level. The strategy is called “Dogs of the Dow”, which is the method of buying the ten highest yielding stocks in the Dow. Over the last decade, the strategy outperformed the index in 7 years and overall outpaced the Dow by 1.7% per year, returning an average of 15% per year for a decade. It also outperformed the S&P 500 considerably.

FINSUM: Who sad value investing is dead? This is a classic strategy that has worked to great effect.

(New York)

The best thing an investor can do right now is to ignore all the market predictions being released for 2020. Every research department has to put out a prediction, and most of them are not worth the paper they are written on. So what does one do? Invest in dividend stocks. It is an important but preciously little known fact that the lowly dividend has historically accounted for 45% of all stock market returns. They are also tangible and predictable in a way stock prices are not, giving them a crucial place in a portfolio.

FINSUM: An additional stimulus for dividend stocks is that the aging population is hungry for them since bond yields are so anemic. Check out AT&T at 5.3%.

(New York)

There is a little known stimulus behind the current trend of advisors breaking away from wirehouses. While many cite freedom of operations and compensation as key reasons for leaving wirehouses, one of the big driving forces is much less appreciated: the requests of clients themselves. According to Shirl Penney, CEO of RIA network Dynasty Financial Partners, “Clients are not simply following their advisors, but sometimes giving them the idea to break free … That’s the dirty little secret that not a lot have been talking about”. High net worth clients increasingly want their advice separated from the manufacturers of the products they buy, which means going independent makes sense for advisors. “So if you’re a million-dollar client of one of our advisors, you now can get independent advice, separate and safe custody and products from around the street the same way that may have been reserved for a billionaire 20 years ago”, according to Penney.

FINSUM: This topic is quite poorly discussed, but seems very salient. We would welcome any emails/opinions from advisors about the extent to which they hear this from clients. Reach us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

(New York)

If your natural instinct is to worry about a looming recession, you are not alone. Logic dictates that with the economy and bull market having been rolling for so long, a downturn is inevitably around the corner. However, the chief economist at Deutsche Bank is making the exact opposite argument. Torsten Slok contends that the economic expansion will likely go on for “many more years”. His explanation: “The lack of willingness to spend on consumer durables and corporate capex is also the reason why this expansion has been so weak … And it is also the reason why this expansion could continue for many more years; we are simply less vulnerable to shocks in 2020 because there are few imbalances in the economy”.

FINSUM: We don’t dislike this view, but in our opinion the artificially low interest rates maintained by the Fed have much more to do with the length of this recovery (and its future prospects), than financial conservatism amongst businesses and consumers.

(New York)

It has taken a long time for bond ETFs to begin getting even a tiny bit of the attention stock ETFs have gotten, but the trend has finally taken hold in earnest, and that s good news for investors. While active bond funds have done well in recent years (perhaps due to it being considered easier to outperform a bond index than a stock index), bond ETFs have now started to surpass them in growth. This is adding much more liquidity to bond funds, which benefits investors substantially. Both active and passive bond funds have taken in over $200 bn each in 2019.

FINSUM: While “liquidity mismatch” worries will continue to linger, the fact is that bond ETFs make a lot of sense (perhaps even more than stock ETFs?) because they circumvent minimum-buy and illiquidity issues, allowing many more people to access hard-to-reach corners of the bond market.

(New York)

Calm and collected asset manager Vanguard has just made an eye-opening call about 2020. The firm’s chief economist and investment strategy chief, Joseph Davis, says there is a 50-50 chance of a correction in 2020. The market hasn’t seen a correction since December 2018, when it dropped to within a hair of a bear market. Davis says he usually sees about a 30% chance for a correction in any given year. Vanguard says that while investors were too pessimistic about recession chances this year, next year they’ll be too optimistic about re-inflation.

FINSUM: Seems a reasonable call, if rather safe.