Jon Robinson

Recent Posts

Did Your Retirement Bucket Spring a Leak in 2022?

Posted by Jon Robinson on 1/26/23 12:14 PM

Not 2008, not the early 1980s, but 2022 was the worst year for bonds on record, according to an analysis by investment historian Edward McQuarrie.

That’s more than a headline for financial advisors who have relied on fixed income as the less-volatile portion of their 70/30 or 60/40 portfolios – especially for their retirement-age clients. It’s a breakdown that can have lasting effects on those who can afford it the least, unless the advisor has a strategy for mitigating the risk of those impacts.

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Topics: Systematic Investing

Can Retirement Income Be Modernized? A Guide for Financial Advisors.

Posted by Jon Robinson on 10/3/22 3:58 PM

Just one of these scenarios likely would be enough to cause concern for an investor:

  • Potential end of the post-Global Financial Crisis secular bull market in equities
  • Prospect of the first sustained rising U.S. interest rate environment in more than 40 years
  • Highest inflation level in four decades

Yet in 2022, we’re facing all three at once. It’s a potentially catastrophic combination, especially for investors nearing or in the early years of retirement.

In my opinion, this is a “perfect storm” (yes, I know that’s a super cliché saying – even I cringed when typing it). And it demonstrates how the need for a more modern approach to retirement income has never been greater. It also motivated my colleague, Brandon Langley, and I to embark on a research project into different approaches to sustaining clients throughout retirement. Today, we’ve released our findings in a new white paper available to financial advisors, “An Advisor’s Guide to Protecting Retirement Income.”

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Topics: Systematic Investing

What The Data Says About Market Crashes

Posted by Jon Robinson on 9/8/22 1:00 PM

When we travel by air, my wife usually points out that she thinks it would be better if people by windows boarded first; that way, anyone in an aisle or middle seat wouldn’t have to keep standing up. Meanwhile, I think the Southwest Airlines style of pick-any-open-seat is optimal.

Our “gut feelings” were recently rendered irrelevant when we ran across an old episode of “MythBusters.” In it, the cast built a mock 173-seat aircraft and tested several boarding approaches using real people and luggage.

Relying on the data cut through the emotional biases. It also inspired me to take a similar data-backed look at a common question I hear about systematic investing: Is this style of investing capable of reacting fast enough to declining markets?

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Topics: Systematic Investing

Courage Is Not the Absence of Fear in Mountaineering (Investing Too!)

Posted by Jon Robinson on 6/28/22 11:00 AM

A friend recently convinced me to watch a new(ish) Netflix documentary, “14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible.” It follows a Nepalese mountaineer who attempts to climb all 14 of the world’s peaks higher than 8,000 meters in less than seven months.

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Topics: Behavioral Finance

You Know Who’s Terrible in a Crisis? A Robot.

Posted by Jon Robinson on 2/15/22 12:23 PM

Call me a luddite if you like, but few things annoy me as much as when I navigate to a new webpage and that, “How can I help you?” box pops up on the lower right. That chatbot entering uninvited always sends me on a frantic search for how to make it disappear as quickly as possible.

Those bots have fully infiltrated the online world: banks, municipal governments, dental offices, nonprofits. Even a robot for my neighborhood grocery store recently wanted to talk to me when I simply needed to verify the hours!

I think about this scenario as it relates to investors. With so much money moved into robo-advisors, what is the experience going to look like when REAL people have REAL questions? “How did the S&P close yesterday?” is easy for a robot. But what answer is going to pop up when the question is, “The market is collapsing! What should I do?” or, “How do I reduce risk in the midst of this volatility?”

More to the point of this blog: How different would the answer be if it were coming from a trusted financial advisor?

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Topics: Advisor Practice Management

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