New Dalbar research takes a look at asset protection strategies through the prism of opportunity cost, with a view toward lowering investors’ hedging costs or even increasing their total returns. This podcast (8:10) suggests that Dalbar’s alternative allocation findings are quite helpful, so long as advisors do the appropriate due diligence for their clients, but also proposes another strategy for Dalbar’s quants to test empirically.
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Roll Call reports that the Teamster’s largest fund is headed toward insolvency, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation fund that serves as its backstop is about four years from depletion. CNBC reports a closed Catholic hospital’s nearly 700 former employees may wind up with nothing from its insolvent pension. This podcast (6:51) suggests that people can survive portfolio depletion more easily than the drying up of lifetime income, and that advisors’ income plans must therefore specify how much their clients should save, what they can spend and when they can retire.
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The Wall Street Journal notes that investors have grouped around consumer staples amidst the big sell-off, for fear of an economic downturn. This podcast (7:00) suggests tweaking the consumer staples category, first to “sin” stocks, then to “comfort” stocks, to accent the more robustly selling products and services during downturns.
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The retirement journey that people dream of is actually a sort of journey, one which they burden by overpacking. This podcast (5:27) suggests that it behooves investors to think about what they will “pack” for that retirement journey long before they’re going to take it; doing so may help frame decisions as to what they need today versus what they will need in retirement. 
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We lack complete clarity about the coronavirus situation, but from an abstract investment point of view, we can say that embracing volatility is generally the path to increasing returns. This podcast (6:20) suggests investors discriminate between deservedly and undeservedly punished stocks in the indiscriminate market plunge, with the understanding that bad news is generally the best time to buy.
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The weekly blog of Rick Kahler, a well known financial planner with a national reputation, turns up with four solid ideas to counter common investor mistakes. This podcast (6:20) suggests that Kahler’s four decades of experience speaking with flesh-and-blood clients sounds more real, and is thus more persuasive, than a lot of the trendy behavioral finance research out there. 
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One of the surprises on Blackstone Group’s Byron Wien’s annual “Ten Surprises” list was that an oil price shock would send West Texas Intermediate Crude to over $70 a barrel. At about the same time, BlackRock announced its big move away from fossil fuels. Their positions are closer than they seem. This podcast (7:01) argues that energy companies, which today reside in the bargain basement, may be worthwhile investments, from a value-perspective if not values perspective (leaving it to listeners to determine the moral path of their portfolios).
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Financial advisor Rob Isbitts of Sungarden Investment Management, based in Weston, Florida, defines his style as “aggressive capital preservation.” In this podcast (19:33), the veteran advisor, and publisher of advisor site TheHedgedInvestor.com, keeps the focus on remaining humble, which he characterizes as balancing reward and risk at all times.
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The main public claims against Michael Milken back in 1990 are today mainstream and widely understood as beneficial, whereas the technicalities that sent him to prison and banned him from the financial industry remain as opaque today as then. This podcast (8:01) argues that criminalizing innovation not only took a financial genius out of commission, but sent a signal to other would-be innovators not to be overly creative. It may even have reduced economic growth and cost you your job.
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Most Americans do not have emergency funds, a seemingly small oversight that likely has very large repercussions. This podcast (6:11) argues that the absence of such funds lies at the root of a hazard that reduces retirement savings by about a fifth, a “leakage” that amounted to $69 trillion in a year, in one recent U.S. government study.
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