Editor's Letter: March 2013
In late 2011, I was amazed by the valuations financial services stocks were being awarded. Having blown up (for all practical purposes) the financial system beginning in the summer of 2007, it was only natural that financial stocks should be sold off, because, well, some were insolvent.
Editor's Letter: Don’t Try to Be Nate Silver*
Here at REP. magazine and WealthManagement.com, we receive loads of books each year on finance, investing strategies, business, leadership and other how-to-invest-in-various-financial-instruments books.
Q&A: Jennie Devlin, Cantella & Co.
Headquarters: Boston
Established: 1952 by the son of a Sicilian immigrant
Number of producing advisors: 201
Total firm AUM: $3.9 billion in AUM; consult on over $5 billion in 401(k) plans
1. What makes you different?
Private Ocean
Greg Friedman, owner of Friedman & Associates, and Richard Stone, founder of Salient Wealth Management, met some years ago at a Schwab IMPACT conference. Turns out their financial advisory offices were within 10 miles of each other.
A few years later, Stone says he came to a crossroads. His firm, Salient had hit a wall. The practice had met growth targets, but Stone says, to remain on the growth path he had to master technology and create a deeper bench of employees. “If I would have lost one or two people, we would have been in trouble,” Stone says.
Ellison Kibler & Associates, Merrill Lynch
Remember Oct. 19, 1987? That was the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 22.6 percent in one trading day. That was a Monday and by that Saturday, J. Hagood Ellison Jr. and E. Robertson Kibler, both Merrill Lynch financial advisors, were huddling to change their business models. Back then, the classic brokerage model reigned: stock picking for commissions.
Editor's Letter: A Contrarian Changes His Mind
I love to read GMO’s quarterly reports. For obvious reasons: Everybody loves to read about horror. GMO, for the few who don’t know, is a famous asset manager (about $100 billion in assets under management) founded by Jeremy Grantham and his partners.
Editor's Letter: The Continuing Crisis
The New York Post published an interesting article recently explaining to the lay reader just what, as the NYP’s headline writers put it, the Libor scandal really means. The paper’s headline read, “Li(e)bor Confirms It’s Rigged.” Wait. Bankers rigging inter-bank lending to suit their needs? No way! That’s a shock.
