Article Archive for "How We See It"

When Congress left town on Christmas Eve, it failed to address a major issue – the repeal of the federal estate tax…

After going through multiple investment bubbles, a severe credit crisis, and two painful recessions, the “Lost Decade” for stock investments has come to an end.   In fact, the latter half of 2009 left us with a rather robust recovery and the idea that we may be participating in a sustainable economic recovery.
At the beginning of [...]

There’s no better time than the beginning of a new year to implement a new budget in order to gain control of your spending. In the final installment of our series on Quicken, we provide a few pointers to make using Quicken more meaningful so that you can better track where your money goes.

When selecting mutual funds to use in our client’s accounts we use various quantitative and qualitative factors to evaluate if we believe a fund can add value.  Morningstar is the most widely used source of mutual fund data and analysis, so we rely on their data for a significant portion of our research.  One thing [...]

As many of you know, it can be hard to create a budget and even harder to stick to it. To do so, we generally recommend using software like Quicken that is designed specifically for expense tracking.

Will Holt, CFP®, CPA was recently quoted in the Saturday Evening Post.
Will discussed tax-loss harvesting, an important but often over-looked tax strategy.  Click here to read the article, “Taking the Sting Out of Investment Loses” by Russell Wild, MBA.

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.

Bill Ramsay, CFP®, recently participated in his third Triangle Business Journal roundtable event.  The 2009 Financial Roundtable: Wealth Strategies was held at the Triangle Business Journal office on September 29th, 2009, with the full article appearing in the October 16th, 2009 issue.
Bill also participated in the Triangle Busniess Journal’s rountables on August 23, 2007 and [...]

Understanding the difference between a fiduciary standard and a suitability standard could pay major dividends in a relationship with a financial professional.  Operating under the fiduciary standard requires a planner to put the client’s interest ahead of his or her own.  In other words, don’t be afraid to ask your financial advisor the motivation behind [...]