Entries by Steve Booren

What Do You Own, and Why?

The greatest enemy of successful investing is not always inflation, recessions, elections, interest rates or even market declines. Often, it’s distraction: the shiny object promising an easier path; the belief in “something better” than patiently following a well-designed plan.

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There Is Still No Algorithm for Trust

AI raises an important question, especially for any business that offers advice: What can technology do, and what can it never truly replace? I believe technology can provide information, but a good advisor provides understanding.

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Do You Want Advice, Agreement or Assurance?

I’ve held many versions of this same conversation over the years. Sometimes they genuinely seek perspective. Other times they want reassurance that everything will be all right. Sometimes they’ve already decided what they want to do and hope an advisor will simply reinforce that choice. Those are three very different conversations.

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While the World Worries, Progress Continues

Fear is understandable. People are not foolish for worrying about war, rising prices, political division or an unexpected event interrupting the retirement plan they spent decades building. Yet my nearly five decades in this business have taught me a critical lesson: Even understandable fears can drive damaging financial decisions.

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When Complexity Looks Like Wisdom

Complexity often reassures many investors. Surely a system involving so many formulas, ratings, models and highly compensated experts must mean diminished the risk, right? The truth is often the opposite: Rather than remove risk, complexity simply disguises it.

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From We to Me: The High Cost of Becoming One

There are few transitions in life more profound than moving from “we” to “me.” Whether through the passing of a spouse or a divorce, the change is emotional, financial, and deeply personal. For those approaching or already in retirement, this transition can be especially difficult.

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Why? What? How?

I believe it’s valuable to step back from all of the political, financial market, and economic noise and ask ourselves some fundamental questions: Why am I investing? For what am I investing? How will I get there? The answers to these questions will never be found in today’s attention-seeking headlines. Their only goal is to […]

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The Plans You Don’t Make

Most people think of financial planning as being solely tied to numbers. But a quiet assumption is built into nearly every person’s plan, whether they recognize it or not: They assume the future will cooperate. But life never has been, nor will it ever be, linear.

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The Investors Who Disappeared

He was known as the “Great Bear of Wall Street,” Jesse Livermore was one of the best known investors of the early 1900s. But his story is not a happy one. It raises the uncomfortable question: How can someone be so right … and still not succeed?

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The First Monday of Retirement

For many, retirement is an imagined finish line. A date circled on the calendar. A number on a statement. A moment when the alarm clock turns off for good and life finally begins to slow down. Every day becomes a Saturday!

And then it arrives.

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