Tag: behavioral-finance

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).

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.

Let’s say you want to drop a few pounds or improve your physical strength. You might hire a trainer to help create a plan and provide guidance.

Now imagine your trainer wasn’t just there for encouragement, but could actually do the exercise for you? That’d be a gamer changer!

That’s how an outsourced systematic investment manager helps financial advisors eliminate behavioral bias and stick to the process: by doing “the exercise” for them.

What does history explain about the future? Part 1

The last 20 years have given us three major market shocks. These resulted from the end of a tech bubble, a financial crisis and now, a global pandemic. During this time, investors have experienced every emotional high and low that can be imagined, yet in general, the approach to investing delivered by the financial services industry has not fundamentally changed. Today’s note establishes the case for why this has to change. Read on…