Posts by Thad Gilliam, CFA, CFP®
20 Second Advisor: SMART goals = intentional life
It’s that time of year when we clean out the junk in our house, take stock of where we are, and maybe make a few goals and plans for the coming year! I love to plan, but I’ve learned that nothing happens by accident. The best way to move incrementally toward the life you envision…
Read More20 Second Advisor: Secret to staying wealthy? Fear.
I just finished reading a fascinating excerpt from the book “The Psychology of Money.” In the article, the author, Morgan Housel, lays out the argument that the skills needed to gain vast sums of money are very different than the skills needed to retain and protect wealth. Specifically, Housel says: Capitalism is hard. But part…
Read More20 Second Advisor: 14% in a month (or musings about market bottoms)
I’ve often written about the dangers of timing the market. See this article for how I liken it to catching a falling knife. In that post, I describe how investors who get out (often near the bottom) may miss out on the substantial returns that have historically occurred after a market bottom. It’s worth asking:…
Read More20 Second Advisor: Catching a falling knife (or why you don’t want to sell out in this market).
I often tell people that timing the market is akin to trying to catch a falling knife. You might get lucky and grab the falling knife on the handle. Or you might get unlucky – grab the knife on the blade and end up in the hospital. In a nutshell, we know that the market…
Read More20 Second Advisor: 6% vs 2.5% Mortgage – The impact of rising rates on home affordability
If you’re looking for a prediction on when interest rates will rise or fall, alas, I cannot give you that info as I left my crystal ball at home this morning. But, I want to point out how much the recent rise in interest rates affect the monthly payments homeowners must pay when refinancing or…
Read More20 Second Advisor: Concentrated Wealth – A good thing until it’s not.
I was in a meeting last week with a group of other local financial advisors. One of the advisors shared a story about a prospect (from long ago) that was a Yahoo executive. At the time, Yahoo stock was soaring. The advisor begged the prospect to diversify and engage in a strategy that would reduce…
Read More20 Second Advisor: Your Accounts & TD’s transition to the Schwab platform
As many of you know, TD Ameritrade was purchased by Charles Schwab in Q3 2020. We think that Charles Schwab is a great company and we look forward to migrating to their platform in the coming months. The two companies have been working behind the scenes to integrate their two platforms for the past 2…
Read More20 Second Advisor: The Weight of Decades vs The Opinion of Weeks
Benjamin Graham – one of the fathers of value investing is credited with the following quote: In the short-run, the market is a voting machine – reflecting a voter-registration test that requires only money, not intelligence or emotional stability – but in the long-run, the market is a weighing machine. Benjamin Graham, as Quoted in…
Read More20 Second Advisor: My Bike Ride Across GA & Investments
This past weekend, I got to take part in BRAG (Bicycle Race Across GA). A friend and I chose to ride for 3 of the 7 days (from Columbus GA to Dublin GA). Some interesting lessons learned (and that apply to investments are): The power of groups (ie drafting). A lot of the time, my…
Read More20 Second Advisor: Investor vs Speculator?
I’m a firm believer that investments should have expected future cash flow. True investors should “expect” to be compensated for delaying gratification and taking risk (ie uncertainty). If an “investment” doesn’t have future expected cash flow, it is not an investment. Rather, it is a speculative guess. These speculative guesses are based purely on the…
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