All Posts By

Cadence WM

Sep 24

Cycles Matter

By Blog
One of the most dangerous delusions being pumped and disseminated by Wall Street today is that the economy and stock market can and should continue to thrive indefinitely without interruption. Wall Street is notoriously perma-bullish based on its business model being dependent on steady investment inflows, so for those paying attention, it’s no surprise why its foot soldiers don’t express opinions through the financial media or otherwise that are counter to this perpetually rosy view. More recently, and it’s been increasing in intensity over the last couple decades at least, the Federal Reserve has taken it upon themselves to attempt…
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Sep 10

Precious Metals Have Something to Say

By Blog
As we’ve discussed with clients for a couple years now, the outlook for precious metals has been steadily improving. From a price or relative value standpoint, they’ve seldom been cheaper relative to financial assets and as we’ve stressed, long-term investment performance is all about the price we pay for something. From a fundamental standpoint, the potential for precious metals to provide investors, governments, and the global populace in general with peace of mind and a reasonably stable store of value has probably never been better. Here’s why, as we touched on above: Central banks are ten years into an economic…
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Aug 21

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 6 > The Investment Elephant in the Retirement Room

By Blog
You may have to account for at least one, but probably more of the preceding issues before and during your own retirement.  However, the biggest threat that we can think of is also the one that gets almost no attention in the “biggest threats facing retirees” research we conducted, and it illustrates the need for people to work with a professional more than any of the items mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. With the U.S. stock market currently enjoying its longest and largest bull market in history, the potential for large investment losses is very high.   The last two major…
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Aug 07

U.S. Stocks – How Risky is This Party?

By Blog
The month of July has seen the broad U.S. stock indexes such as the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Nasdaq achieve new highs – which of course is a good thing for those with meaningful exposure to them. On the surface it appears that the party is still in full swing. We don’t have to go back very far however for a reminder of how quickly things can go bad and how uncomfortable it can be when losses start to pile up quickly. The fourth quarter of last year saw stocks sink almost 20% while May of this…
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Jul 24

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 5 > How Much Home Equity Can Be Unlocked?

By Blog
For many years now, home-owning Americans had more equity in their homes than they did in their retirement accounts.  In order to afford their retirements, they would have to find a way to unlock that equity, either by selling their homes and renting or moving in with family, or by downsizing to a cheaper home and netting the difference in the sale and purchase prices.  Even for home-owning Americans with healthy retirement accounts, unlocking home equity by downsizing is a common strategy to increase retirement assets.  Unfortunately, with so many baby boomers selling bigger and buying smaller at the same…
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Jul 16

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 4 > When Should Someone Start Taking Social Security?

By Blog
There is an abundance of online advice on this topic.  For every year beyond your full retirement age you delay taking social security benefits, those benefits go up 8%.  As a result, many Internet experts say that’s the way to go, as you can’t guarantee getting 8% increases on your investments in any given year so you might as well take advantage of a guaranteed 8% increase in your benefit.  Likewise, because you receive permanently reduced benefits by taking Social Security before your full retirement age, many Internet experts also caution about that strategy.  Well. . .  it’s just not…
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Jun 11

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 3 > The Potential Pension Bomb

By Blog
Most American workers received pensions in past decades.  When pensions started becoming more scarce, it forced Americans who had no real knowledge of saving and investing to manage their own money they would need to secure their retirements.  By most accounts, this shift of responsibility has not worked out well for a large percentage of American workers.  There are many current retirees with corporate and government pensions paying for part of their retirement, and there are also still a few companies offering future pensions along with most state and federal departments.  That’s the good news.  However, not all is rosy…
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May 20

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 2 > Healthcare Spending Is Increasing Faster Than the General Inflation Rate

By Blog
The changes to what we pay for the goods and services we buy do not increase by the same rate every year; some years they go up slowly, some years they jump up, and some years the cost of certain goods or services even goes down.  However, the longer-term trend is that the cost of the goods and services we purchase to live our lives is increasing.  For most items that historic increase is around 3% annually.  However, healthcare costs have been rising much faster over the past 40 years, with many estimates falling in the 6% to 8%+ per…
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May 06

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 1 > Retirees’ expectations are based on a past that will probably not be the future

By Blog
The only certainty about the future is that it is uncertain.  When it comes to retirement planning, identifying the uncertainties and their potential financial impacts are our best shots at protecting ourselves from those things that could prevent us from reaching our retirement goals.  Researching the “top issues facing retirees” yields list after list of future uncertainties, everything from living too long, to the solvency of the Social Security system, to speculation around future asset prices.  While we reviewed many of the issues facing retirees today, we saw some we thought important enough to highlight, but we also noticed some…
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Apr 22

Either You Believe in Magic or You Believe in Math

By Blog
What we have been experiencing in financial markets the last few years has been truly mind-boggling. We would venture to say that nobody could have come even remotely close to forecasting the combination of events that have played out since the global financial crisis in 2008. Above average U.S. stock market growth with below average economic growth? No way. Foreign stocks being worth less ten years later? Not likely. More than $10 trillion in sovereign (governmental) bonds yielding less than 0%? To be clear, this means you pay the government to lend them money. That would be ludicrous. It will…
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