Author Archives: David John Marotta

As with many financial decisions, our gut feelings deceive us on this matter.

Good financial planners can be worth their weight in gold in helping clients build a tax-efficient portfolio.

The process of defining your sectors is an attempt to identify the quintessential features of your strategy and formalize your selection criteria.

The greater the number of holdings the lower the turnover rate with one surprising exception.

Resource stocks represent one of the most interesting collections of diverse indexes as they do not always move in sync with one another.

Beware the turnover rate. It’s much wiser to invest in funds managed by people you trust.

Stocks less frequently traded have better returns.

The higher the correlation the greater the justification to put them in the same asset class.

It is good to take the two categories which are most similar and use them as underlying sector divisions within the same larger asset class.

Should they be over weighted in your portfolio?

The value of not running out of money when making withdrawals cannot be measured.

David John Marotta and Megan Russell were interviewed on the radio discussing ways recent graduates can make themselves more attractive to employers in today’s tough job market.

Correlations over the past year have been very low, while correlations over the past 10 years have been higher.

Portfolio design and rebalancing is both a science and an art. Knowing that rebalancing boosts returns is useless unless you as the investor follow through.

The correlation between two investment is used in portfolio construction and rebalancing.

Rebalancing can both boost returns and lower volatility, but most investors do not understanding how.

David John Marotta was recently interviewed on radio 1070 WINA’s Schilling Show discussing success, and how to structure your life for greater chances of success.

Branding is so much more important than advertising.

The cost of commission-based advisors are so hidden that you may be paying more than you realize.

Every nonprofit needs to keep an up-to-date list of the types of assets that they will accept as donations.

Each quarter brings a different set of returns for each asset class and subcategory.

We are not normally fans of credit card offerings, but this one might be worth using as your primary card.

Ten principles of safeguarding your money applied to the latest investment scandal.

Here’s how a good advisor should respond when you call about losses in your account.

“Lawsuit lenders do not advertise prices; they advertise convenience.”

A computer algorithm cannot help you with these things.

See our review of the two pros and nine cons of how Schwab monitors and rebalances portfolios.

It is better to do tax planning all throughout the year, but here are 12 things to do (or plan to do in the coming year) before April 15.

It is a great marketing campaign, and the service is a wonderful idea, but the asset allocations of SIPs aren’t actually that intelligent.

“What do you think of the idea of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) implemented simply by investing in something like the Domini Social Equity Fund (DSEFX)?”

You cannot help a company by buying its stock.

“Advisers need to sell their value as keeping their clients from doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.”

From the blind eye of the law, this seems like a violation of SEC regulation.

We expect the Garrett Planning Network to quickly take down these SEC violations from their website in response.

It isn’t too late to print a retraction.

The principles of a fiduciary cannot be condensed into a set of rules.

“We still have plenty of problems, but we’re much better than France, Britain and Germany.”

Most investors are not aware of an important separation in the professionals of the financial services industry.

“They find whatever is different and peck it to death.”

My wife and I are 65 years old and I am newly retired. Is there any advantage in doing a Roth conversion this year?

“The most important thing I learned from my research was never to attempt to forecast the price of oil.”

The domestic spying of the executive branch deserves our outrage. Efforts like “Citizenfour” that keep the issue in the public eye deserve our support.

At first glance, AUNZ did not have great returns in 2014. But is that the whole story?

Q&A: “I don’t understand how to explain what happened to the share price. What was going on in the fund?”

The new holiday cliché is to complain about hyper-materialism, but gifts and gift giving help shape our identities.

Obama evidently believes that politicians are elected to make a difference in the lives of Americans. The problem is that no one can opt out of a federal impact.

An immediate fixed annuity is not an investment; it is an insurance product.

The loudest tend to drown out competitors regardless of whose reasoning is better.

A short documentary film showing how the media thrives on misleading headlines.

David John Marotta and radio host Rob Schilling discuss what did well in the market as well as the online security of investments.