(*F is for Fiduciary) Much has been said and written in the past year about standards to which advisors are held. This has been primarily due to the recent passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which included a provision requiring the SEC to study the oversight of brokers and Registered Investment Advisers (RIAs). While there are many nuances to the oversight differential, it really boils down to one thing: RIAs are held to a fiduciary standard; brokers are held to a suitability standard. Briefly, a fiduciary advisor is required to act with undivided loyalty to the client, including disclosure of compensation methods and conflicts of interest. On the other hand, the broker’s suitability standard requires only that the broker’s recommendations are suitable for the client’s situation. Those two definitions are on opposite sides of quite a chasm, don’t you think? I think that the consumer […]
November, 2010:
Update on Time Out of the Market
As an update to the article I wrote last month about the Cost or Benefit of Time Out of the Market, as promised I went back and ran the numbers for all the S&P 500 data that I could locate, starting in January, 1871. This information is taken from an ongoing study by Robert Schiller for his book “Irrational Exuberance”, and since the S&P 500 index hasn’t actually been around for that whole time, the earlier numbers are an approximation of the index. So anyhow, I looked at both five-year and ten-year data for a buy-and-hold strategy and the same periods for our momentum strategy (discussed in the earlier article). In the buy-and-hold strategy, in the average five year period the return averaged approximately 6% per year, an aggregate of 31.49%, and for the ten-year periods, the average was a little higher, at just over 7¼%, for a total return […]
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Was BP Just Being Nice?
Remember back when the oil spill first started to get really ugly, and BP announced their efforts to start the cleanup, by whatever means were necessary? BP even went so far as to hire some 2,000 people to assist with the effort – 2,000 people who lived in the gulf coast area. BP also very publicly announced that they’d only consider people who had been out of work for 60 days or more – under the auspices that they were altruistically working to improve the lot of these folks who had been impacted by the economy, and further by the spill itself. I’m not going to address the spill or the cleanup, this has been discussed in many forums to great length. Regardless of the effort put in and the emotional ramifications of BP’s cleanup effort – I found it interesting that BP specifically indicated they’d only consider folks who […]
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2011 Retirement Plan Limits Published
The IRS has published the numbers for the annual contribution and income limits for retirement plans for 2011. You can find the highlights at the page Annual Limits for Retirement Plans – 2011. Essentially, very little changed from 2010 – IRA contribution limits are the same, as are 401(k), 403(b) and 457 plan contributions. The catch up provisions are the same for each type of plan as well. A few of the phase-out limits on MAGI were increased, but by negligible amounts. On the bright side, the Social Security taxation limit did not increase over 2010. Whee! Photo by Wikipedia
Sterling Raskie, MSFS, CFP®, ChFC®
The latest in our Owner’s Manual series, A 401(k) Owner’s Manual, was published in January 2020 and is available on 
A Medicare Owner’s Manual, is updated with 2020 facts and figures. This manual is available on 
Social Security for the Suddenly Single can be found on Amazon at 
Sterling’s first book, Lose Weight Save Money, can be 
An IRA Owner’s Manual, 2nd Edition is available for purchase on Amazon. Click the link to choose the 
Jim’s book – A Social Security Owner’s Manual, is now available on Amazon. Click this link for the 
And if you’ve come here to learn about queuing waterfowl, I apologize for the confusion. You may want to discuss your question with Lester, my loyal watchduck and self-proclaimed “advisor’s advisor”.