A colleague recently shared with me a story about a January tradition of the Kiwanis Club of Cape Fear in Fayetteville, NC, which holds a contest to see who can best predict where the Dow Jones Industrial Average will end the year.

She described how some members have a thoughtful internal debate while others jot down numbers seemingly at random. By the following year, pretty much no one remembers the guess they submitted, and rarely is the winner someone within financial services. A chiropractor won in 2020, a national defense analyst the year before.

What made the contest sound so fun to me is that the guesses and winners seem so haphazard and unexpected. Why? Because most predictions are garbage.

At Blueprint, we like to think that our trend-following proclivities have many applications. Some (like our ability to systematically manage assets for our advisor clients) are certainly more useful than others (like the fresh 2020 pop culture reference that will come when you read on).

In my view, there is a common misconception that most financial advisors are also entrepreneurs. I do not see the advisory business as being statistically different from any other industry in terms of the mix between business owners/operators and entrepreneurs.

You may have seen or heard about the, “how it started...how it’s going,” trend that’s been going around the internet lately.

The concept is to show the passage of time in two images, often to highlight accomplishments and sometimes purely for comedic value — you’ll find examples of each in this post.

In this blog, which is the last of a three-part series on ESG investing, we’re looking at the, “how it's going,” particularly as it relates to adoption and implementation.

It took some painful contortions in the markets this year for many advisors to realize robo-advisors may not be as diversified and risk-managed as they claim.

At Blueprint, we believe there is a “sweet spot” between the rudimentary machinations of a robo-advisor and a more traditional asset allocation method. In fact, we’ve bet our business on it. But, this briefing isn’t meant to say, “I told you so,” rather to articulate a solution to a problem that many well-intentioned advisors are contemplating.