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Media
Matters
Tough
Questions Clients Ask.
Ron Lieber of the New York Times moderated a panel devoted to
the "hardest questions that clients ask" at the Financial
Planning Association's recent annual conference in Anaheim. Elissa
participated in the panel and was quoted extensively in Lieber's
subsequent write up in the Times.
Read
the article.
New
Members of the Team!
The Yeske
Buie financial planning team has just been expanded by two recent
graduates of the financial planning program at Virginia Tech
University. In addition to their work as assistant financial
planners, Jennifer and Yusuf will be doing Client Service work with
Summar's oversight.
Jennifer
Micieli
 Jennifer earned a
B.S. in Agricultural and Applied Economics with an option in Financial
Planning, as well as a minor in Business from the Pamplin College of
Business at Virginia Tech. In her free time, Jennifer enjoys
writing, reading classics, cooking, dancing, playing tennis, visiting new
places, watching Hokie football, and spending time with friends and
family.
Yusuf Abugideiri
 Yusuf earned a B.S.
in Finance in the financial planning track in Virginia Tech's
Pamplin College of Business. Yusuf was an ambassador for the business
school and Student Director of Hokie Camp 2009, an orientation and
team-building program for incoming freshmen. In his free time, Yusuf
enjoys watching football, working out, reading, cooking and eating great
food, and spending time with friends and family.
Note on
pronunciation
It wasn't our intent to hire two
new employees with last names that could be pronounced a hundred
different ways, but here is how their last names are correctly
pronounced:
Mi Shell' Eee
Uh Boo' Ji Dairy
How to Get Help
And don't
forget that our updated client page (http://www.yebu.com/portal.htm)
offers a full list of who does what and who you should contact for help
with various issues. Contact numbers and email links are available
from that page as well.
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Academic
Hypothesis Not Guilty!
Jeremy
Siegel, writing in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, defends the
Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), which many have declared defunct after
the meltdown of the past year. Siegel points out, however, that the
EMH never claimed that market prices are always right -- to the
contrary, it implies that prices are mostly wrong -- it simply says that
there's no way to know HOW they're wrong. That is, there's no way
to know whether they're too high or too low, and thus, our best strategy
is to accept the market price as our best estimate of true value.
He further
points out that "neither
the rating agencies' mistakes nor the overleveraging by financial firms
in subprime securities is the fault of the Efficient Market Hypothesis.
The fact that the yields on these mortgages were high despite their
investment-grade rating indicated that the market was rightly suspicious
of the quality of the securities, and this should have served as a
warning to prospective buyers."
In addition
to being a professor of finance at the University of Pennsylvania's
Wharton School, Siegel is also one of the founders of Wisdom Tree, the
company that manages the international mid-cap fund in your
portfolio. Also worth noting is that the originator of the
Efficient Market Hypothesis, Eugene Fama of the University of
Chicago, is a board member and Director of Research for Dimensional Fund
Advisors (DFA).
Read
the full article.
Staying Calm in
a World of Dark Pools, Dark Doings
Jason Zweig lays out the case for why dark pools and
high-frequency traders are our friends. While the sometimes frantic
trading of these "professional" players is just noise to the
long-term investor, they also serve a valuable function by creating
liquidity and lowering transaction costs for everyone.
As Zweig
puts it, "As an investor, you are free to choose your own time
horizon. If other people want to try to earn a few fractions of a penny,
a few thousand times a day, you should wish them well -- and refuse to
join them."
Read
the full article.
Use
Demographics to Front-Run Your Children
The
Business Insider reports on a little nugget that Tobias Levkovich
included in a recent Citi presentation, in which he makes the
case that demographic trends will tend to drive the markets higher for
the foreseeable future. Levkovich points out that the number of
people entering the prime savings years of 35 - 39 is expected to
increase well into the future. While there will be a brief dip
in the near term, Levkovich suggests that this is really a buying
opportunity for Boomers.
I'm not a
fan of demographic explanations for market trends (and the economic
evidence for such is weak) but this should at least give pause to anyone
claiming that the looming retirement of the Baby Boomers bodes ill for
the market.
See
the chart.
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