Articles by Bill Ramsay

Bill's Profile

Bill Ramsay has been providing financial services since 1985 and earned his CFP® certification in 1998. Continuous improvement and commitment to quality are among his core beliefs. These values are reflected in the growth of Financial Symmetry and the loyalty of clients and staff. Bill is often interviewed for industry publications such as Financial Planning, Inside Information, Journal of Financial Planning and Investment Advisor.

Link to Bill's Full Bio

http://financialsymmetry.com/our-team/bill_ramsay_cfp/

The primary purpose of measuring risk capacity and applying it to an investment strategy is to prevent being forced to sell low.
In other words, we want to prevent short term risk from harming your long term security.
In operation, the higher your capacity for risk, the more of your portfolio can be allocated to stocks which [...]

Probably not, even though it may feel like it.
What’s Going On
The financial markets have been hit with a steady barrage of negatives.
Europe is still struggling to address the problems inherent in the Euro — namely that they have a currency union but not a political union.
Here in the US the short term budget deficit caused [...]

As most people know, healthcare costs have been rising much faster than other areas of our economy for decades.  The chart below demonstrates what will happen to federal spending levels if healthcare costs continue to rise too quickly.  Despite what some are saying, it is clear that other areas of federal spending- including social security [...]

As mentioned in our previous blog post about the debt ceiling, we said that our long term fiscal problem is heavily influenced by two issues- taxation and health care costs.
There is a school of economic theory that says that the level of taxation has a strong inverse relationship with economic growth.  In other words, some [...]

We all hear about how the US is going broke. Depending on the viewpoint or agenda of the source of what we hear, read or see, the cause of the federal government’s financial problems varies.
Unfortunately, there is almost always a lack of actual facts and perspective, so the public is left to try to [...]

An easily forgotten truth of investing is when prices are high, skies are sunny and when prices are low it’s stormy.  In other words, successful long term investing involves turning cautious when things look good and aggressive when things look bad.  Sunny = Sell High, Stormy = Buy Low.
Best Time to Invest
Think back to last [...]

When it comes to investing, emotions are probably the single biggest obstacle to success for most investors.  Since strong emotions often accompany politics, we feel it’s important to try and minimize politics when gathering our investment research and implementing investment strategies.
Given that there are plenty of examples of the economy and markets doing well and [...]

Feeling a little nervous about the recent drop in the market? You’re in good company as it’s perfectly normal in this type of environment.  In fact, we’d be surprised if the drop had not made you nervous as that is what the majority of people feel after a rise over 14 months long.  Here are [...]

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney is offering as much as 330% of a brokers annual production to join the firm.

Click here to view the article from Investment News: “Morgan Stanley Smith Barney pumps up recruiting packages to lure top producers.”

With all the problems that big Wall Street firms caused for the global economy, it is absolutely [...]

Bill Ramsay, CFP®, was recently quoted in the November 2009 Investment Advisor magazine.