For decades now, the overriding message from the Financial Services Industry, from Wall Street to your friendly local financial advisor, has been that you need to “put your money in the stock market and always invest for the long run.” Well, the economic times we’re in combined with a stock market that’s gone nowhere for the past decade have forced that message to change. They have no choice. Its become apparent to the average investor that the stock market has been and still is a bad bet. As a result, the Financial Services Industry realized that if they didn’t change their sales pitch, they’d end up with less of your money in their pockets.
Is the change a good thing? Does it mean they are now investing smarter and selling safer products? You need to be able to recognize the new pitch and understand what’s really for sale.
Here’s a look at what the new pitch looks like, taken from an October 24th Yahoo News story, On Wall Street, Selling Fear Is Good Business:
— In the current retirement issue of Money magazine, which lacks even a single article or advertisement that promises glorious investment returns, Prudential Financial bought a full-page ad to offer “A responsible answer to an era full of risk.”
— Elsewhere in the popular press, leading asset manager BlackRock begins its pitch for its funds by asserting, “Today’s markets are as uncertain as ever.”
— Main Street brokerage house Raymond James, sympatico with the message of most of its peers, asks in a recent marketing brochure: “In these volatile times, is your portfolio structured as it should be?”
The article further points out that a recent survey of investors arrives at the, “bottom-line message…’Financial advisors are best-positioned to help investors become comfortable with alternative investments and other new strategies.’”
So, let me understand this. The very people responsible for losing 85% of investors more than half their money over the last decade, while enriching themselves, say they are now going to solve the problem? I don’t buy it.
Understand that they have two goals. The first is to see to it that you keep your money with them and the second is to convince you to roll your money to something new, because that is usually how they get the majority of their fees. This new sales pitch is designed to accomplish both.
With their latest game the “experts” are now assessing which of three groups their client is in, then pitching them what fits. Listed below are those three groups, the products they’ll pitch, and my take on their value as an investment.
Group 1: No more losing money! I need to protect what I have.
If you’re in this group, the likely pitch will either be for a conservative, “safe” bond fund such as government backed bonds, or an annuity. Any bond fund, unless it contains only very short term bonds (loans maturing in 24 months or less) is highly likely to lose you a lot of money. Rates are extremely low right now by any historic standard. When they rise, and they will, the value of all bonds and bond funds, unless they have a very short maturity, will drop by a lot. If we just go back to normal interest rates, we’re talking a drop in fund value of about 30%. If rates go above their historic average, which they are likely to, the loss in value will be much more than 30%. Long term and intermediate term bonds and bond funds are normally pretty safe investments, but right now they are anything but.
As for annuities, there are some limited situations where a variable-income annuity may be a good idea. The subject is complicated, with some of the difficulty added intentionally to make it harder for you to follow. Most of the salespeople are well trained to “prove” what a great thing the annuity is and how right it is for you, as the commissions (from your money) are almost always very big. Unless you’ve done your homework, you are very unlikely to spot the fatal flaws in their logic, which are likely to be there. The best advice I can give is this: Do not purchase an annuity unless you are willing to first do enough research on your own to learn how they really work and assess whether they might be good for you. If you decide that you are the exception, then buy a no-load annuity and save the commission. When in doubt, remember this: never break the investment rule that says, “if you don’t understand it, don’t invest in it!”
Group 2: I can’t just sit here making nothing. I need to grow my money!
Boy do they love it if you’re in this group. They will gleefully pitch you “alternate” investments, aka high risk, high fee, investments. These are, for the most part, either excessively risky or poor investments that you should avoid unless you really know an awful lot about them.
Let’s start with gold. Should you invest in gold? Maybe, but if only a very small percent of your assets. Compared to all the other risky investments they’ll be throwing at you, gold is, well, pretty “golden”.
Easily the most successful (when it comes to sales volume, not performance) new class of tradable instruments in recent years have been the billions of dollars of exotic investment products sold to investors as a way to profit from the swing of the market. If anyone pitches you one of these, run! Nobody can predict the market reliably. Absolutely nobody. It’s pure Vegas-style gambling. You might as well go put it all down on a single roll of the dice.
There are also many other financial products created just for the Group 2 investor: high risk bonds, risky real estate investment trusts, and publicly traded master limited partnerships containing hard assets that are structured to provide “high dividends in an income-deprived world”. These products all promise, sometimes even guarantee, a good return. The problem is in the fine print that warns you that you might not get back your full principal. So, if you only get back $7000 of your original $10,000 investment, that’s just the risks, right? It’s such a classic con, high dividends at the expense of your principal.
Group 3: I want to continue to be patient and always invest for the long run in the stock market. This, of course is asking them to continue to play the same old game they’ve always played. If that’s what you want, they’re more than happy to oblige. After losing half of most people’s money, inflation adjusted, over the last decade plus, most people are done with this, and I couldn’t agree more, at least for now. If you still think you should be investing in the stock market, see my current evaluation of the stock and bond markets about why I disagree. Then if you still want to invest in stocks, invest only in index funds after you learn more about what index funds are and why they’re the only stock market investment most people should ever make.
Regardless of your risk tolerance, be aware of the financial pitches that are being used and understand what is for sale. I’m here to tell you that most of the financial products now being sold do a vary good job of generating fees for them, but far too often do a very poor job of protecting or growing your money.
Sadly, the system has become utterly corrupt and so I always insists that that you can depend on nobody–not your “friendly” financial advisor, the alleged experts of the financial media, or any level of government for that matter. You truly must depend only on yourself–I call it DIY money management. It’s your money, and nobody can manage your money as well as you.
Tens of millions of us who do what works, get to live the life we’ve worked for, and so can you. Everything you need is available through my blog, my radio show, my book, and www.MoneySmartOnline.com. Also be sure to sign-up for Smart Alerts so I can keep you informed in the future when there are shifts in the game or shifts in my evaluations of the six major investment markets.