WEALTHTRACK Portable

Happy New Year and Happy New Decade! What will the 2020s bring? As J.P. Morgan famously said: “Stocks will fluctuate.” In 2019 they fluctuated mostly higher and the U.S. was still the place to be. Tech giants such as FANG’s Facebook, up 56%, Google’s parent Alphabet, up 29% and Amazon.com up 23% propelled the NASDAQ 35% higher. The S&P 500 rose nearly 27% and the Dow Jones Industrials advanced over 22%, all trading in record territory.

It was pretty much a year for stocks all over the world, which is of course bringing the doomsayers out in droves. An excellent article on the front page of The Wall Street Journal’s Year-end Review & Outlook section is a good example. It’s titled: “Japan’s Lost 30 Years Give Pause To Those Looking at The U.S.”

What are the stories propelling economies and markets in 2020 and the decade going to be? It’s a podcast conversation we had with Nobel Laureate economist Robert Shiller about how important powerful narratives driving the economy are.

WEALTHTRACK #1627 published on January 03, 2020.

More info at: https://wealthtrack.com/nobel-laureate-robert-shiller-explains-his-theory-of-narrative-economics-how-powerful-stories-influence-the-direction-of-the-economy/

Since launching WEALTHTRACK in 2005 we have asked economic legend Ed Hyman to share his new year forecast with us, which he has done pretty much exclusively since the beginning. We also invite a leading portfolio manager to join him. For the fourth year in a row, First Eagle’s Matthew McLennan is doing the honors.

This week we are presenting the second of our two-part series focused on the global economic and investment outlook. In case you missed it, we tackled the 2020 prospects for the U.S. economy and markets last week which you can see on WEALTHTRACK.com or our YouTube channel.

In part one of our 2020 Outlook edition, Hyman predicted, as he did accurately for 2019, that the longest economic recovery on record in the U.S. would continue. He sees no signs of recession and believes that growth will actually pick up! He also forecasts that Wall Street will continue to climb a wall of worry, which he will describe in detail.

Matt McLennan is not as optimistic. One of his main concerns is the record levels of government and corporate debt in the U.S. and the problems it poses to future growth and liquidity, especially in the event of a slowdown. After the record-setting bull market run he also believes the U.S. market is expensive. He is investing very selectively in super high quality, market-dominant companies. He has a stash of cash to take advantage of sizable market declines and a significant position in gold to offset market risk.

We will start our global outlook discussion this week with one of the biggest headline events of 2019 - Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “Get Brexit Done” victory in the United Kingdom which Hyman thinks has worldwide significance.

In the first of this two-part series on the Outlook for 2020 our focus is on the U.S. Last year Hyman correctly forecast the now record-breaking economic recovery would continue and that a recession was several years away.

More info: https://wealthtrack.com/positive-2020-outlook-for-us-economy-says-wall-streets-1-economist-ed-hyman/

There is a retirement crisis in this country. It is becoming more apparent as 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day. A recent Wells Fargo survey found that more than eight in ten current retirees fund their retirement primarily with Social Security, or a pension; just 5% do so from personal savings such as an IRA or 401(k). Seven in ten retirees say they would have “no idea what they would do” without Social Security.

Contrast them with younger generations who expect savings to be the top source of their funding; 45% of millennials say they must rely on IRAs or 401(k)s and only 25% expect to rely on Social Security or a pension.

Everyone talks about income inequality, but there is persistent extreme retirement inequality and it’s getting worse for the lowest-earning workers. Workers in the top 20% of earnings distribution have held about half of all retirement wealth between 1992 and 2010, whereas the share in the bottom 20% fell to 1% from 3% in the twenty-year period. And the percentage of those without any savings among the bottom earners increased to 51% from 45%.

No matter what income group you look at savings makes a huge difference. The top 10% of savers in all income groups, from the highest to the lowest consistently held 10-20 times the retirement wealth of the bottom 10% of savers.

What has caused the retirement crisis and are there policy and personal solutions to fix it? Two retirement experts will join us with some answers. Teresa Ghilarducci is a Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research where she is Director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA) and the Retirement Equity Lab (ReLab), which researches the causes and consequences of the retirement crisis. Ghilarducci is a co-author with former WEALTHTRACK guest, Tony James of Rescuing Retirement: A Plan to Guarantee Retirement Security for All Americans.

Jamie Hopkins is Director of Retirement Research at Carson Wealth, and Finance Professor of Practice at Creighton University College of Business. Hopkins a frequent WEALTHTRACK guest is an expert on retirement income and author of Rewirement: Rewiring the Way You Think About Retirement.

WEALTHTRACK #1624 broadcast on December 13, 2019.

More info at: https://wealthtrack.com/americas-do-it-yourself-system-is-failing-many-retirees-answers-from-two-retirement-experts/

Last week’s podcast with influential and outspoken economist David Rosenberg generated a tremendous amount of traffic and comment. We are running part 2 this weekend.

Rosenberg had been predicting the end of both the record-breaking U.S. recovery and bull market this year. Needless-to-say it hasn’t happened, and he is the first to admit he missed this year’s impressive run in large-cap stocks as a result. However, his recommendation to own long-term Treasury bonds has paid off. Year-to-date the 30-year has delivered about a 20% return.

Rosenberg who is known for seeing emerging economic patterns before most others do, sometimes a couple of years early, is sticking to his guns in forecasting that a U.S. recession is imminent and is very concerned about the damage the record-breaking load of U.S. and global debt, what he calls “the mother of all credit bubbles on steroids” will have when it occurs.

What was intended as one session with us turned into two because he had so much evidence to share about global and domestic conditions and the state of the financial markets.ere

Last week he made his case for recession. This week his focus extends to the markets and recession resilient investments.

As we mentioned last week, Rosenberg is launching his own macro research and strategy firm in January, Rosenberg Research and Associates. He explains why he decided to make that long-held dream a reality in our EXTRA feature on WEALTHTRACK.com. In the meantime, he remains as Chief Economist and Strategist at Toronto based wealth management firm, Gluskin Sheff.

More info: https://wealthtrack.com/slowing-economies-record-levels-of-debt-are-a-dangerous-mix/

Influential economist David Rosenberg lays out a persuasive case for the end of the record-breaking economic recovery in part one of a two-part WEALTHTRACK conversation.

WEALTHTRACK # 1662 published on November 27, 2019.

Do corporations need a new purpose? Does the free enterprise capitalist system need a major overhaul or a tune-up?

We have two guests with strong views on the topic. Ken Langone is Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Invented Associates. He is Co-Founder of the Home Depot where he was Lead Director and a member of the executive committee of its board from its founding in 1978 until 2008. He is a noted philanthropist and the author of I Love Capitalism!: An American Story.

He is joined By David Gardner, the Co-Founder, and Co-Chairman of The Motley Fool, a global online investing service launched with his brother Tom in 1993. Motley Fool’s purpose is to make the world smarter, happier and richer by helping individuals become better investors.

WEALTHTRACK #1621 broadcast on November 22, 2019.

More Info: https://wealthtrack.com/is-corporate-americas-focus-on-profits-the-problem-with-capitalism-two-entrepreneurs-respond/

As the Dow and S&P 500 hit new records this week, there is much to contemplate and for the markets to digest in the final weeks of 2019. Time to consult Jason Trennert of Strategas Research Partners, a financial thought leader who has the scope to put it all together and tell us what it means.

WEALTHTRACK #1620 broadcast on November 15, 2019.

More info: https://wealthtrack.com/recession-bear-market-risks-with-financial-thought-leader-jason-trennert/

We are always on the lookout for the exceptional on WEALTHTRACK. It’s not easy to find among actively managed mutual fund managers. Only 23% of actively managed funds in all major categories, including stocks, bonds, and real estate outperformed their passive index fund rivals over the last ten years. And only about 8% of U.S. large-cap funds outperformed passive, the smallest margin among all active fund categories winners. No wonder that active U.S. stock funds are experiencing substantial outflows and passive stock funds are gaining assets. In a historic shift, passive assets in U.S. equity funds recently surpassed those in actively managed ones for the first time ever.

This week’s guests are bucking all of those trends. They are active managers in primarily large-cap U.S. stocks. They have been beating the market and peers by substantial margins over the last decade and they are attracting more assets.

Joining us for a rare interview is Chuck Akre and John Neff of Akre Capital Management

WEALTHTRACK #1619 broadcast on November 08, 2019.

More info: https://wealthtrack.com/finding-compounding-machines-with-the-great-investor-chuck-akre-his-gen-x-co-manager-john-neff/

Socially responsible investing has taken off and interest in it is accelerating. As we’ve reported before on WEALTHTRACK, U.S assets invested in companies screened for ESG, or their environmental, social and governance policies grew 38% from 2016-2018 by more than $3 trillion to $12 trillion dollars. According to U.S. SIF, or the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment, which tracks these funds, that $12 trillion represents 26% or one in four dollars of the $46.6 trillion of U.S. assets under professional management.

This week’s guest is a leader in the relatively recent field of fixed income ESG investing, as well as the new area of impact investing in public fixed income markets, where bond proceeds are directed to a specific project or goal and the results are measurable. He is Stephen Liberatore, lead portfolio manager at TIAA Investments for responsible investment fixed income mandates that incorporate ESG criteria.

Liberatore will discuss what he looks for as a socially responsible bond investor in a field that has traditionally been dominated by equity investors.

WEALTHTRACK #1618 broadcast on November 1, 2019

Learn more: https://wealthtrack.com/bonds-with-social-impact-with-five-star-fund-manager-stephen-liberatore/