Nerd's Eye View
APRIL 18, 2025
Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that as total household financial wealth grew to a record high of $90 trillion at the end of 2024, so too did the number of households advancing up the wealth ladder, with the High-Net-Worth (HNW) category of households with at least $5 million seeing a significant gain.
Calculated Risk
APRIL 18, 2025
Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Housing and Demographics A brief excerpt: Ill return to the above graph and discuss some of the implications for the next decade, but first, here is a similar graph for July 2010. The arrow points to the large cohort moving into the key renter age group in 2010. It was fifteen years ago that we started discussing the turnaround for apartments.
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Wealth Management
APRIL 18, 2025
How automating forms can help financial advisors save time, reduce errors and ultimately improve client experience.
Alpha Architect
APRIL 18, 2025
The main benefit of constructing industry momentum portfolios based on standard ICS is that it is straightforward and reproducible. However, that benefit may come at the cost of accuracy and oversimplification of complex industry relationships between companies. Enhancing Industry Momentum Strategies: Finding Hidden Neighbors was originally published at Alpha Architect.
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Wealth Management
APRIL 18, 2025
Jim Nagengast submitted his complaint against his former firm under seal, so the details of the allegations are unknown. But attorneys pledged to release a redacted copy soon.
Validea
APRIL 18, 2025
Join Matt Zeigler and Bogumil Baranowski as they play clips from both the Excess Returns and Talking Billions podcast interviews with Aswath Damodaran. This conversation unpacks Damodarans timeless insights on navigating uncertainty, embracing the process of investing, and finding comfort in a volatile market. From the ritualistic allure of the Berkshire Hathaway meeting to the pitfalls of factor investing, Main Topics Covered: The dangers of rigid, ritualistic value investing and the Berkshire
Financial Advisor Source brings together the best content for financial advisor professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
NAIFA Advisor Today
APRIL 18, 2025
NAIFA wishes a happy 30th anniversary to our affinity partners Mickey Straub and the SAMUSA team. Since launching and naming the industry in 1995, they have pioneered sales activity management solutions and collaborated with industry giants such as MetLife, New York Life, Northwestern Mutual, Ameriprise, MassMutual, Knights of Columbus, and others, as well as top-performing firms and producers.
Wealth Management
APRIL 18, 2025
The effort would reflect a fundamental restructuring of how formerly independent agencies implement and enforce federal laws.
Advisor Perspectives
APRIL 18, 2025
Rapid U.S. policy changes pose challenges for investors accustomed to a global financial system anchored in U.S. markets and assets.
Wealth Management
APRIL 18, 2025
ETFs, which trade on a public stock exchange, have proved hard to implement, given the natural mismatch between the underlying illiquid private debt assets and liquid nature of the wrapper.
Speaker: Claire Grosjean, Global Finance & Operations Executive
Finance teams are drowning in data—but is it actually helping them spend smarter? Without the right approach, excess spending, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities continue to drain profitability. While analytics offers powerful insights, financial intelligence requires more than just numbers—it takes the right blend of automation, strategy, and human expertise.
Advisor Perspectives
APRIL 18, 2025
Right now we are in an incredibly complicated environment with regard to U.S. tariff policy gyrations and its whipsawing impact on global equity markets. One thing we can confidently assert is that however the trade negotiations play out, there will be higher tariffs and this will be negative for U.S. growth.
Wealth Management
APRIL 18, 2025
Want to know what your firm is really worth? Its more than just revenuegrowth, talent, and strategy all play a role.
Advisor Perspectives
APRIL 18, 2025
Canadians poured a record amount into US equities in February, even as a movement to boycott US products and vacations gained momentum.
Wealth Management
APRIL 18, 2025
Zephyr's Ryan Nauman and Horizon Investments' Clark Allen discuss the trends and future of ETFs, emphasizing the importance of connecting investment products to client goals through goals-based planning.
Speaker: David Worrell, CFO, Author & Speaker
Your financial statements hold powerful insights—but are you truly paying attention? Many finance professionals focus on the income statement while overlooking key signals hidden in the balance sheet and cash flow statement. Understanding these numbers can unlock smarter decision-making, uncover risks, and drive long-term success. Join David Worrell, accomplished CFO, finance expert, and author, for an engaging, nontraditional take on reading financial statements.
Advisor Perspectives
APRIL 18, 2025
Audiences worldwide turn to Netflix for escapism. Wall Street is doing the same.
The Big Picture
APRIL 18, 2025
This week, I speak with Martn Escobari, Co-President and Head of Global Growth Equity at General Atlantic. Prior to joining General Atlantic in 2012, Martn served as Managing Director at Advent International and Co-Founder and CFO of Submarino.com, a leading Brazilian online retailer. He also spent time with The Boston Consulting Group. In addition to his current role, Martn is also Chair of General Atlantic’s Global Growth Equity Investment Committee and he serves on the Executive and Po
Advisor Perspectives
APRIL 18, 2025
While the April 2 tariff announcements were more severe than anticipated, Vanguard’s active fixed income managers were well-prepared for the subsequent market reaction.
Abnormal Returns
APRIL 18, 2025
Listening How Mel Robbins became a podcasting giant. (wsj.com) How a Holocaust denier became one of the most popular podcasters in the U.S. (nytimes.com) Don't be an audiobook snob. (wsj.com) Tariffs Cardiff Garcia talks tariffs with trade economist Chad Brown. (eig.org) Logan Bartlett talks tariffs and America's future with Derek Thompson and Zach Weinberg, Co-founder & CEO of Curie.Bio.
Speaker: Erroll Amacker
Automation is transforming finance but without strong financial oversight it can introduce more risk than reward. From missed discrepancies to strained vendor relationships, accounts payable automation needs a human touch to deliver lasting value. This session is your playbook to get automation right. We’ll explore how to balance speed with control, boost decision-making through human-machine collaboration, and unlock ROI with fewer errors, stronger fraud prevention, and smoother operations.
Advisor Perspectives
APRIL 18, 2025
LPL Financial LLC announced today that financial advisor Steve Jones of Tenacity Investment Group has joined LPL Financial’s broker-dealer, Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) and custodial platforms.
Calculated Risk
APRIL 18, 2025
From BofA: 1Q GDP tracking increased three tenths to 0.7% q/q saar after the upward revisions to Jan and Feb core control retail sales. [Apr 17th estimate] emphasis added From Goldman: We left our Q1 GDP tracking estimate unchanged at +0.4% (quarter-over-quarter annualized). [Apr 17th estimate] And from the Atlanta Fed: GDPNow The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2025 is -2.2 percent on April 17, unchanged from April 16 after rou
Advisor Perspectives
APRIL 18, 2025
Talk of a recession is everywhere. The case is simple: Liberation Day delivered the biggest increase in tariffs in a century. Consumer prices will rise. Purchasing power will decline. Recession…right?
A Wealth of Common Sense
APRIL 18, 2025
Life in the late-1800s, by today’s standards, was dismal for the vast majority of the population. The average life expectancy at birth was just 45 years. Most homes had no bathrooms and no one had electricity just yet. There was no such thing as a radio, telephone, motion pictures or professional sports. Robert Gordon estimates that 87% of all jobs in 1870 could be described as unpleasant based on work conditions.1.
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Based off SkyStem's popular e-Book, the book of secrets to the month-end close will be revealed in this one-hour webinar. Learn leading practices when it comes to building a strong and sustainable month-end close that has room to grow and evolve. Learn about the power of precise estimates, why reconciliations are critical to closing the books, how and when to automate, and how the chart of accounts play into your close process.
Advisor Perspectives
APRIL 18, 2025
Less favorable seasonal technicals, increased focus on municipal-specific policy risks, and severe volatility spurred by higher-than-anticipated tariff increases weighed heavily on sentiment and resulted in deeply negative total returns and significant underperformance versus Treasuries in March and early April.
Random Roger's Retirement Planning
APRIL 18, 2025
A reader left a link to an article at the WSJ about he stocks of the private equity operating companies like Blackstone (BX) and KKR. I'd been meaning to check in on them with a blog post because we've looked at them several times for blogging purposes. They are kind of like tech stocks as we've observed before. They tend to go up more than the broad market on the way up and now they are going down more on the way down.
Advisor Perspectives
APRIL 18, 2025
If I had a dollar for every time I heard or read the word recession in the last week, well, I’d have enough not to be financially worried about one. Add a dollar for every mention of tariffs and I’d be comfortably flushed with cash.
The Big Picture
APRIL 18, 2025
My end-of-week morning train WFH reads: The world’s hot new trade is “sell America” For decades, the world has invested in America. Now, a global moment of clarity threatens to redirect trillions of dollars of capital inflows and diminish the U.S. in the international economic order. The U.S. receives nearly $2 trillion each year in foreign capital inflows, according to government data things like investments in businesses and bank lending, but also foreign investors buying U
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Like being inches from the end zone, many advisors are frustratingly close to their next level of success. You work hard. You put in the hours. But if your closing rate is stuck or your pipeline feels like a revolving door… something has to change. Most advisors are just one small shift away from dramatically increasing their revenue. The difference?
Advisor Perspectives
APRIL 18, 2025
Stock markets have been rattled by trade war tensions and economic uncertainty driven by US tariff policies. Yet history suggests that equities have usually performed well in the aftermath of peak market volatility.
Truemind Capital
APRIL 18, 2025
Equity Market Insights: And It All Falls Down… Over the past few quarters, weve consistently shared our view that a valuation reset was overdue in India, particularly in the mid and small-cap segments. This quarter, that reset finally arrived with the sugar rush coming to an end. During the quarter, Indian equity benchmarks posted their fifth consecutive monthly decline, marking the longest losing streak in nearly three decades.
Advisor Perspectives
APRIL 18, 2025
Banks blew Q1 earnings expectations out of the water, benefitting from high trading volumes, but CEO commentary remains cautious for 2025.
Calculated Risk
APRIL 18, 2025
Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios. For deaths, I'm currently using 4 weeks ago for "now", since the most recent three weeks will be revised significantly. Note: " Effective May 1, 2024, hospitals are no longer required to report COVID-19 hospital admissions, hospital capacity, or hospital occupancy data. " So, I'm no longer tracking hospitalizations.
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