Showing entries with the topic “Investments”.
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Jul 2020Approaching Retirement? Be Careful with Equities (and this has little to do with COVID-19!)
A recent PLANSPONSOR article cited a February study which indicated that the average individual nearing retirement held 78% of his/her portfolios in stocks. While that percentage may have declined, given what has happened since February, COVID-19 should be irrelevant to the argument as to why those …
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Mar 2020Putting Retirement Plan Losses in Perspective
I’m not thrilled with the recent market volatility, and I suspect that you’re not either! Like many, my retirement plan account has suffered, and, as someone in my 50s, this is not great news. However, it has not suffered as much as the Dow Jones Industrial Average (down 25.7% year-to-date, as of 3/…
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Mar 2020Looking to Buy an Annuity? You May Already Have One!
Annuities, a form of investment that can provide a future stream of income payments to their owners, are aggressively marketed in retirement plans. And, it appears that the recent market uncertainties will only exacerbate the situation. While annuities serve as an important component in retirement p…
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Feb 2020Random Nuggets I’ve Learned from the Internet, 2nd Edition
One of the benefits of constantly consuming retirement-related content is that, even after 28 years in the retirement business (yes, I’m old!), there is still an endless number of things to learn. In the second edition of “Random Nuggets I’ve Learned from the Internet,” I cover some of those.While i…
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Dec 2019Why the Road to Zero-Revenue Sharing Can Be Bumpy
Revenue sharing refers to the practice of investment providers sharing revenue with recordkeepers in exchange for performing some of the duties that the investment provider would typically have to do. Since the concept is difficult to explain to participants and has been the focus of litigation, an …
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May 2019The Future of Retirement Plans
In our Revamping Retirement podcast, we have been addressing the evolution of the retirement plan landscape over the past 25 years. And a lot has changed - from technology, plan design and investments, to, of course, fees. But what might the next 25 years have in store for the future generation of r…
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May 2019The Stock Market Darlings: Then and Now
In the recent episodes of our Revamping Retirement podcast, we have discussed the changes in retirement plans since I started working for Cammack Retirement Group way back in December of 1991 (yes, I’m old!). As you may imagine, things are quite different - from plan design, to investments, to techn…
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Feb 2019Beware of these Heavily-Marketed Recordkeeper Products
I often have retirement plan sponsors ask me, “What is your opinion of Product X?” More often than not, it is a product that has been aggressively promoted by their retirement plan recordkeeper. Now, to be fair to retirement plan recordkeepers, with lower fees and declining margins, they are in an i…
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Jan 2019The Stock Market Soap Opera and Some Basic Math
The volatility of the stock market has become a major news story lately. But, as we well know, there is a tendency for the media to exaggerate. So, is the current stock market “crisis” real - or just a soap opera? And, if the “crisis” has substance, should it cause concern for retirement plan invest…
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Nov 2018Please Give This to Any 20-something Who is Not Saving for Retirement
In this week's Top of Mind, Mike Webb strongly urges people to start saving for retirement prior to age 30.
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