WEALTH CONCEPTS, STRATEGIES AND NEWS

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

The mood of the high-wealth

The economy continues to bounce back, and while wealthy investors aren’t exactly taking the bull fully by the horns, experts say they certainly appear willing to chase after it.

Top Canadian investment advisors suggest greater recent investor activity, particularly within high-risk investments, shows the market is feeling positive and optimistic.


Despite the downturn, Canada had more than 550,000 high net worth (HNW) households at the end of 2009, and 2010 has been a relatively positive year, says Investor Economics director Keith Sjögren. Total assets under management belonging to HNW individuals across the country totalled $1.68 trillion in 2007, and held at $1.7 trillion in 2009, showing that the shift from growth strategies to capital preservation strategies after the crash worked.


Sjögren observes that investors are moving into the broader market again in noticeably greater numbers. “I think high-net-worth investors remain cautiously optimistic. There has been a change—it seems as though the wealth has been recovered and so they’re willing to assume some more risk. It appears the worst is over,” he said.
Andrew Marsh, president and CEO of Richardson GMP, says the panic of 2008 has been replaced with a sense of realism and positive ambition among investors, particularly when it comes to higher-risk investments previously left abandoned.

“There’s a mood of optimism mixed with cynicism. I think high-net-worth families have gone from extremely risk averse to being more comfortable with equities as an asset class because they see some positive movement in our economy. Since 2008 we’ve really learned what risk means,” Marsh said.

He says investors appear to be more open to stretching themselves now that they’ve seen some stability and are feeling underwhelmed by safe returns.


“People reacted to the meltdown by bailing from equities and they went to fixed income products. As confidence comes back, people are starting to feel the guaranteed rates they wanted so badly three years ago are disappointing after they see the returns. As a result they’re starting to see the potential value of stocks again,” Marsh said.
Sam Sivarajan, head of private wealth management at UBS, says the first quarter of 2011 has been a good indicator that people are getting active in the market again. But many are hedging their exposure to the U.S. dollar and looking at emerging markets more closely, particularly since many of those markets—like Turkey and Indonesia—did better than the larger markets over the past 24 months.


“Generally people are tired of the low yields, tired of sitting on the sidelines in cash, especially as they’re now seeing the economic recovery. People are looking to get back into the market in a protected way. There’s an interest in investing globally and looking outside the big economies for growth and stability,” Sivarajan said.


Even as the market recovers and high-net-worth investors restart their engines, there is still a profound sense of caution among investors that cannot be understated, says Mike Newton, senior vice president of Macquarie Private Wealth Canada.
“These are low-conviction optimists, they’re optimistic but not overly so. People have very strong memories of what happened in 2008. Despite what’s happened in the last 18 to 29 months in stocks, I still think most high-net-worth investors are reluctant to take on more risk. I don’t think that with dips in the market, investors are looking at it as a buying opportunity yet,” Newton said.

He points to the shuffling and uncertainty in the U.S. economy as a prime factor in keeping investors meek, and suggests perceptions of a recent surge in investor courage could simply be a sign that traditionally high-risk investors are dusting off their boots to get back into the rodeo.


“Some people who had very concentrated portfolios really got hurt—these types of people have an appetite for risk. They were sick to their stomachs for about a year but many of them are back, and they’re even more trigger-happy now. When they have a win they take their profits earlier and when they lose they take that loss and move on quicker, too,” Newton said.


Still, the effects of the meltdown are likely to be felt for a long time and the real challenge is just beginning for high-net-worth advisors, who will have to rebuild trust with clients and should expect tougher questions and more footwork going forward, Sjögren says.


“The damage that was done was not just done to portfolios but people’s comfort levels as well, both with their comfort with the market and with their advisors. It’s getting harder to please a high-net-worth investor,” he explains.
Newton warns high-net-worth investors against feeling too comfortable with the economic rebound and instead suggests now is the right time to think about their next contingency plan.



“The most interesting thing to me is the people I met in December of 2008, whose portfolios dropped 40%. Now that we’ve had a good rally and their portfolios have recovered to where they were, they feel like they got away with something, but I don’t feel they learned anything. I think people need to develop a contingency plan for when this happens again,” Newton said.

  • Raf Brusilow is a freelance journalist and writer living in Toronto.



  • About me: I give Economic, Social and Global trend briefings from some of the world's brightest minds at my blog http://saveriomanzo.com/ and http://saveriomanzo.blogspot.com/. I also provide true and tested financial planning and wealth advice. Most recently, over the past few years, I have become socially conscious and have been attempting to practise ways in which I can live my life more environmentally friendly.   Along with some truly exceptional friends, we provide consulting and business development for small-medium sized businesses.  In addition, I truly believe in being philanthropic, giving and doing unto other as we would have them do unto us. Some of my fondest resources are from Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture, David Rosenberg and what Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway is up to behind the scenes, as an example. saverio manzo

    http://www.everyoneweb.com/saveriomanzo/     http://saverio-manzo.jimdo.com/   http://saverio-manzo.yolasite.com/   http://saverio-manzo.webs.com/  http://saverio-manzo.weebly.com/   http://saveriomanzo.terapad.com  http://www.shareowners.org/profile/SaverioManzo  http://www.linkedin.com/pub/saverio-manzo/b/995/63  http://twitter.com/saveriomanzo   http://www.facebook.com/people/Saverio-Manzo/854720596?ref=search

    Friday, May 6, 2011

    Smart Financial Management

    If you are unable to take care of your finances and you desperately want to take control over it, you must use money management tips. Gaining the knowledge of practical money management tips not only enables you to gain peace of mind by helping you live within your means but also helps improve your monetary condition. This article provides you with information about how you can manage your money on your own in a better way.

    Tips to manage money
    If you want to take control over your finances, you can either manage it on your own or you may hire a credit counseling agency to provide you with professional help to manage money in a methodical way. However, if you have time to do it on your own, you can save a lot of cash by not hiring a credit counseling agency to assist you to manage it.
    Thus, here are some tips you may use in order to manage your money on your own.

    1 . Create a budget – Track your income and your expenses and find out if your expenditures are more than your income. Also make sure to start a spending plan and take note of your daily expenses regularly. This may be time consuming but it will help you analyze your financial situation. List your spending, both the fixed ones like house and car payments as well as the flexible ones such as the electric and phone bills. This kind of a breakdown will help you get an idea about your financial standing.

    2 . Review your credit report – Get a copy of your credit report and review it thoroughly. Investigate if there are any inaccuracies in your credit report such as typing mistakes or out-dated information. Immediately take up steps to remove such erroneous information from your credit report.

    3 . Automate your finances – In order to automate your financial life, you must contact your mutual fund or broker to have monthly investments routed from your bank. Make sure to do the same for all your monthly utility, phone and cable bills. This will ultimately help you stick to your budget and you will never have to pay a late fee again.

    4 . Check your bank statement – Be careful to read your bank statement regularly. Though each checking statement may differ according to the specific kind of account or bank, yet there are some basic types of entries that you must take note of. Be cautious about any transactions that you think is not yours as they signify that your checking account is in trouble.

    Apart from managing your present finances, you must start accumulating cash for your future. It is preferable to start saving for your future as soon as you have got your first job. This will help you attain a considerable growth in your savings over the time.
    Submitted by gweston, Advisor World


    About me: I give Economic, Social and Global trend briefings from some of the world's brightest minds at my blog http://saveriomanzo.com/ and http://saveriomanzo.blogspot.com/. I also provide true and tested financial planning and wealth advice. Most recently, over the past few years, I have become socially conscious and have been attempting to practise ways in which I can live my life more environmentally friendly.   Along with some truly exceptional friends, we provide consulting and business development for small-medium sized businesses.  In addition, I truly believe in being philanthropic, giving and doing unto other as we would have them do unto us. Some of my fondest resources are from Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture, David Rosenberg and what Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway is up to behind the scenes, as an example. saverio manzo

    http://www.everyoneweb.com/saveriomanzo/     http://saverio-manzo.jimdo.com/   http://saverio-manzo.yolasite.com/   http://saverio-manzo.webs.com/  http://saverio-manzo.weebly.com/   http://saveriomanzo.terapad.com  http://www.shareowners.org/profile/SaverioManzo  http://www.linkedin.com/pub/saverio-manzo/b/995/63  http://twitter.com/saveriomanzo   http://www.facebook.com/people/Saverio-Manzo/854720596?ref=search

    Thursday, April 14, 2011

    How to close a deal like Warren Buffett

    Warren Buffett might be catching a lot of flack these days, but I think if you want to know about closing big deals, he’s still the guy to watch. Why? The man knows how to talk about money when he’s dealmaking.

    Buffett is famous for doing ginormous deals with as little information as a few pages of business plans and the standard financials a company would submit to a bank to qualify for a loan. What he has when he goes into any conversation is an encyclopedic knowledge of how businesses work financially. He knows “their money,” “their wallet,” and how investments and outcomes should work. Follow his lead and you will close more business.

    Here are seven things I’ve learned as I’ve watched Buffett from afar:

    1. Know the other guy’s money - How they make it, how they count it, how they spend it. This is obviously much easier to do for publicly traded companies. For privately held companies, the numbers are fairly easy to estimate, at least the cost of goods sold and probably the cost of sale. These numbers are critical to discussing the possibilities of working together. Too often the discussion stops at budget. When you don’t know, ask. Not the trade secrets, but at least the industry averages. This provides a basic framework for the discussion.

    2. Know the other guy’s wallet - How does this sale impact any of these critical numbers? The terms of the deal should be looked at from their side of the table first, then yours.

    3. Start discussing the money early - You know you are going to discuss the money later. Early in the conversation, you do not have enough information for precision. Instead, you have an understanding of the economics of the prospect’s industry, so you have enough to determine if a deal makes any sense at all. Use that economic information and industry knowledge to frame a shared understanding of the reality of the money for this opportunity.

    4. Use ranges to qualify and disqualify - Understand early (and throughout the discussion) whether you and your prospect are in the same arena. By using ranges of prices, cost structures, yields, and performance you can both be sure that you are dealing in a shared reality rather than getting to the end and finding yourselves so far apart that there is permanent damage done to the relationship.

    5. Speak the language of investment and outcomes - Every large sale is an investment on both parts in an outcome. When you move the conversation from price to investment and cost to outcomes you are focusing on the business impact rather than budget impact. This is the language of large sales.

    6. Don’t discount early - I regularly hear fearful “deal makers” use language like, “Let’s not let money get in the way of working together.” There’s a word for this that is not used in polite company. This is the language of discounting before the scope has been clearly defined. The sales person believes that he is being clever by taking money off the table. What he has really done is to take margin off the table, his and his company’s margin. If qualifying investment and impact has been made up front, then this point does not need to be made again.

    7. Don’t negotiate until it’s time - Work on the deal points one at a time. Work through the investment and outcome ideas clearly, then negotiate. True, all of these points require negotiation. However, too often the conversation turns to negotiations too early before real scope and deliverables have been defined. Which means that the whole is reduced to the little parts before the shared picture of the whole has been established.

    Side Note: I watched a deal unravel recently because the players did not observe these guidelines. The sale involved the installation of a point-of-sale system into a retail chain. The details are complicated as many large deals are, but the numbers were simple:
    If you calculated the investment necessary for the system, the transaction cost was going to be >5% of the transaction revenue value. That’s more than the cost of the charge card processing fee! Never going to work regardless of the reporting bells and whistles, speed to data consolidation and so on.

    This violates rules 1-5. The selling team did not understand the fundamental money issues of their prospect. They had not asked, done their research or even estimated. They were focused on the features of their system and what they had heard the IT people say would be the selection criteria without working through the money issues. That always leads to disaster.

    saverio manzo


    About me: I give Economic, Social and Global trend briefings from some of the world's brightest minds at my blog http://saveriomanzo.com/ and http://saveriomanzo.blogspot.com/. I also provide true and tested financial planning and wealth advice. Most recently, over the past few years, I have become socially conscious and have been attempting to practise ways in which I can live my life more environmentally friendly.   Along with some truly exceptional friends, we provide consulting and business development for small-medium sized businesses.  In addition, I truly believe in being philanthropic, giving and doing unto other as we would have them do unto us. Some of my fondest resources are from Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture, David Rosenberg and what Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway is up to behind the scenes, as an example. saverio manzo

    http://www.thinkinsure.ca/index.php

    http://www.thinkinsure.ca/