With so much uncertainty surrounding tax proposals, many are asking, “How can I do tax planning when the tax code is about to change?”
You might also enjoy these tax related posts for year-end planning:
Year-end financial planning An outline of the basic strategy mentioned in the video above.
Should you donate shares or cash? For the charitably inclined, this technique has additional benefits over simply writing a check.
Making News…
We frequently produce Q&A columns for Florida Today, Investopedia and MarketWatch, a personal finance website of the Wall Street Journal, as well as pieces for Financial Advisor magazine and others. Here is a sampling from the last three months.
Mike Salmon, Derick Chandler, and Charlie Fitzgerald all participated in the Orlando Sentinel‘s Financial Hotline answering questions from readers. Their answers appear in “Ask an Expert” columns in that publication from time to time as they did on August 27th, October 5th and October 16th.
In the News…
Charlie Fitzgerald was active via his role as a member of the Board of Directors for CFP Board, the body that grants and administers the Certified Financial Planner designation in the U.S. In October, Charlie co-hosted a fundraiser for the Center for Financial Planning, an organization working to enhance the academic body of knowledge in financial planning, boost the ranks of young planners, and improve diversity within the profession among other initiatives. November saw him and his fellow board members considering the public comments regarding CFP Board’s initiative to raise standards for CFP professionals through the most extensive update of ethics and conduct rules in a decade.
Charlie was tapped for an “Adviser’s Consultant” column in Investment News. The column features one advisor with a high level of expertise and success sharing insights on a specific issue. This time, Charlie described some of the ins and outs of succession planning for a financial planning practice. He emphasized how important it is to assure continuity of excellent advice and service for clients.
Charlie and Dan Moisand also attended the national conference of the Financial Planning Association in Nashville. As they did last year, each hosted open discussion tables for financial planning students. Charlie and Dan answered a wide range of questions from financial planning students attending Western Kentucky and Kansas State universities.
Things We Found of Note
In our July newsletter, we talked about how most people fail to beat the market by trying to pick more outperforming securities or less underperforming securities than exist in the market as a whole. One reason for this failure is that the number of underperformers usually exceeds the number of outperformers. In many cases, the indexes and other benchmarks are driven by just a few spectacular winners. As of the end of October, the stocks of 137 members of the S&P 500 were showing losses despite a strong year for the index. Among those showing significant losses were well known brands AT&T, Foot Locker and GE. (Waggoner, Investment News Oct 30)
Yet another study shows that fund ratings are useless for determining if a fund will be a top performer.
You’ve heard us say many times that markets can behave in unexpected ways. Change often causes people to reassess their outlook so many expected higher stock market volatility after last year’s election. Instead, the last year has been one of the most stable for U.S. stocks in a long time. So this is yet another example of how betting on the market to do something based on your view of the world is speculative and sometimes harmful. For example, there are funds that are designed to rise when markets are volatile. One of these, VXX, closed at $125.60 the day after the 2016 election. As of November 7th, election day 2017, it closed at $33.52. (Yahoo finance)