I frequently write about clever new financial products designed to fleece investors. This month I want to discuss an older, well-established financial product offered through insurers. It’s called an annuity, and I am not a fan. While much has been written about these products, their high costs and restrictive features are not well understood. Here we’ll take a look at how annuities work and explain why we believe they’re inappropriate for most investors. Take a seat, because this blog is longer than usual.We’ll review April numbers at the end.

In March 2003, I launched Cardiff Park Advisors in California, becoming an SEC-registered firm a few years later. I’d had enough experience with Wall Street culture to be disillusioned and to know what I didn’t want (more on that in a moment). Cardiff Park was my opportunity to create what I did want: a financial advisory firm based on respect, transparency, and my own principles and values.

The president’s recent inaugural speech to Congress had an unusually reassuring tone. But the speech raised one alarm after another for deficit hawks and anyone else still hoping that Mr. Trump would slash spending. The fear is that big-ticket plans like Mr. Trump’s lead to big deficits that dampen economic growth and drive down returns. That’s the conventional wisdom, anyway. But is it true?

Investors and markets don’t like surprises. Will interest rates rise slowly or quickly?  Will Congress appropriate mega-funding to US infrastructure, slash taxes, or both? Are Trump’s growth plans mere dreams, or rooted in reality? What will happen to the Affordable Care Act? As financial pundits pondered these post-election questions, the January markets quietly defied expectations. There’s a lesson in that. 

Don’t Believe the News — We may look back at 2016 as the year in which Russia and fake news helped elect an American president. In the financial markets, it was a year of misleading news as well. The facts were right, that’s true, but most financial analysts got the forecast wrong. 

It’s the Trump era. Or a re-do of the Reagan era. Or possibly the “I don’t understand how to work this” era. How should investors navigate this complex new world of what-if scenarios? For once, even the pundits seem unsure.   

 

Who wasn’t as election results rolled in? Few expected the 45^th president of the United States to be a real estate developer with multiple business bankruptcies and a sideline career as a reality TV show host. Is now the time to rejigger your portfolio? Before you act, check out this month’s feature section on how not to become your own worst enemy.

Presidential elections give rise to all kinds of market predictions. This year, the polarization of American political parties and attention-grabbing remarks by Donald Trump are bringing out the pundits in droves. Our advice: keep calm, carry on, and don’t react to the doomsday scenarios.

Like the wallflower who becomes popular, passively invested index funds are turning heads and inciting foes. Some big guns of the active investment industry are warning of dangers ahead if passive investing gets too big. Despite recent heated rhetoric, there are interesting and valid questions about where it could all lead.

With markets climbing and the Dow hitting a new high, why are investors feeling uneasy? There are plenty of reasons. Chief among them: the global economy is in the doldrums. But there’s more than one way to read the situation, and some analysts see a turning point ahead.