Our latest edition of The Harbor Advisor is now available for your reading enjoyment.
If you would like to join our email list to receive a copy each quarter, please sign up or contact us.
Elyse D. Foster of Harbor Financial Group, Inc. was recognized as a NABCAP Premier Advisor, published in the September 30, 2011 Denver Business Journal. The full article is available here.
This exclusive group of Colorado wealth management firms met an objective standard of excellence, focusing on a wide range of criteria including experience, planning and investment philosophy, credentials and customer service.
Harbor is an independent wealth management firm in Boulder, CO that has provided highly personalized financial planning and results-focused investment strategies since 1988.
Jordan Kunz recently passed the Level III exam of the Chartered Financial Analyst program and earned the right to use the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. Jordan is Harbor’s first CFA charterholder.
The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charter is a globally respected, graduate-level investment credential established in 1962 and awarded by CFA Institute — the largest global association of investment professionals.
There are currently more than 90,000 CFA charterholders working in 134 countries. To earn the CFA charter, candidates must: 1) pass three sequential, six-hour examinations; 2) have at least four years of qualified professional investment experience; 3) join CFA Institute as members; and 4) commit to abide by, and annually reaffirm, their adherence to the CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct.
As a Wealth Manager, Jordan is responsible for managing client portfolios, economic and investment research, and financial planning analysis. He also handles many of our in-house technological initiatives.
Please join us in congratulating Jordan on this significant accomplishment!
Each year thousands of dollars are turned over to states for safekeeping because the owners of the property or funds cannot be located. Unclaimed property can include savings accounts, checking accounts, stocks, uncashed checks, insurance claim payments, safe deposit box contents and the like.
The national database www.missingmoney.com was created in 1999 and contains unclaimed property records to assist the participating states’ outreach efforts in locating the owners of the lost cash and property that they are holding. All but 11 of the 50 states are currently participating. Non-participating states generally also have their own individual searchable databases which may be found by a general search on ‘unclaimed property’ and the state name or by going to www.unclaimed.org, which has links to all of the state databases.
Searches are free of charge, as is filing a claim should you find evidence of missing funds. If your name appears in a search, the web site generally directs the searcher to the individual state’s unclaimed property database for more information and a claim form. Filing a claim involves filling in some paperwork with personal information and attaching copies of documents, generally your driver’s license and social security card. Once you file a claim, you should receive your property within a few weeks.
You are entitled to a free credit report from each of the three credit reporting bureaus each year, but once you’ve pulled the credit report from www.annualcreditreport.com, reading it can often be confusing. The report from each bureau is slightly different but each has four major sections:
• Identifying information: This is your personal information – name, social security number, addresses, both past and present, date of birth, spouse’s name, etc.
• Credit history: This will include the name of the creditor and account number. The account number may be scrambled or changed in some way for security reasons. This is the section that has the original balance of the loan and how much you still owe. If the entry is for a credit card it will have the credit limit and/or the highest balance on the card. Information included will be the status of the account (open, closed, inactive, paid, etc.) and whether or not you have paid and paid on time.
• Public records: This section includes bankruptcies, tax liens, judgments, etc. Ideally this section will be empty or even non-existent on your report.
• Inquiries: This is a list of everyone that has asked to see your credit report such as phone companies and rental agencies as well as companies, such as credit card companies, that might want to pre-qualify you before sending you information. Current creditors sometimes also request a report in order to monitor your accounts.
While it’s estimated that as many as 80% of all credit reports have some misinformation in them there are a few discrepancies to which you will want to pay particular attention. A credit company with whom you have never sought an account listed in the credit history section, a past address where you or one of your children have never lived or a credit balance that you know is not yours might be an indicator of identity theft and should be investigated carefully.
While it may take awhile to decipher your credit bureau reports the first few times around, once you become accustomed to the format, as long as there are no important inconsistencies, this little chore should only take a few minutes.
For the 6th consecutive year, Harbor Financial Group, Inc. of Boulder, Colorado was included in Financial Advisor’s 2011 Top RIA Ranking as one of the best and fastest growing wealth management firms in the nation.
The full results were published in the July 2011 edition of Financial Advisor magazine and can be found here.
The increasingly fevered discussions, may we say overt brinksmanship, in the capitol over the US debt ceiling and long-term budget deficit are by their very nature a political issue. Missing from this debate and war of talking heads is a non-partisan voice in the middle of the storm. One stating the fundamental facts and figures with cool dispassion and laying out tough solutions.
In this case, forgotten might be a better word than missing. Two separate reports have come and gone with similar possible solutions.
The President’s Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform released a report in December 2010 with a number of solutions to drive down the deficit. The full report, along with panel member commentary is available on the Commission’s website. A majority voted for the sobering plan, but it lacked the supermajority necessary for further action in Congress.
Similarly
, Mary Meeker, a partner at KPCB and business analyst, released an independent report titled “USA Inc.” in February 2011 approaching the federal government as if it were a business in need of a dramatic turnaround for its shareholders. The full USA Inc. report is available for viewing and downloadable as a PDF.
I have attached one of the last slides of the report that sums up the problem at hand.
A new video presentation from Meeker has also just been released (highly recommended):
We are available for discussing the debt situation, as well as the investment implications for a variety of potential scenarios.
Most of you know the name Morningstar, as it has over the years been a valuable tool here at Harbor for high quality information about mutual funds, ETFs, fund managers, investment strategy and the latest investment news. I recently attended their national conference, which differentiates itself in that it is not funded by any speakers or sponsors. The information is delivered at a high level and is very well researched.
The conference was held in Chicago, which also happens to be Morningstar’s home turf.
Key speakers were Bill Gross, founder of PIMCO, Bruce Berkowitz, founder and chief investment officer of Fairholme Capital, Don Phillips, President of Fund Research for Morningstar, Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of Blackrock, and Harvard University professor of Economics David Laibson. Breakout sessions were staffed by some of the brightest and most engaged people in the industry. The sessions were set up to encourage information exchange and healthy debate and covered topics from active versus passive management to new strategies for income in portfolios.
Some highlights:
Bill Gross argues that the U.S. government has decided to dig out of our economic hole by ‘picking the pockets’ of investors through inflation and low real interest rates. The current 5-year treasury has a real interest rate of -.05%. With nominal interest rates less than inflation, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio will shrink at the expense of savers.
Gross suggests looking outside the U.S. for investments, to those countries with a less repressive policy. Brazil, Canada and Mexico debt is recommended. For U.S. investments he suggests blue chip, dividend paying stocks.
Bruce Berkowitz believes that financials are in a similar state as seen during the savings and loan crisis in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He believes the situation to be a cyclical event. He believes the financial institutions to be solid, well valued and firmly entrenched in our economies. The fund’s investment in AIG was a foray into Asia. Emerging China is growing as is its middle class and life insurance is a way to ensure middle class security.
David Laibson is a Harvard college professor of economics. His presentation “The Age of Reason: Financial Decision Making Over the Life Cycle” was very interesting if a bit disturbing. He presented statistics on the effects of aging of the brain, specifically decision making. He ties in economic facts reflective of the financial industry, for example older people pay higher mortgage and credit card rates. He suggests creating products and services that allow the aging person to maintain control, at the same time remain safe financially. This is news we can all use as most of us know or have worked with an aging individual.
I then developed my list of most valuable takeaways:
• Look at longer timeframes for investing. Investor behavior is a big negative factor in performance, estimated at 1-2 percentage points per year
• Match short term needs to cash and secure portfolio holdings
• Communicate to staff and investors
• Take a leadership role
• Consider adding a planning module on aging well with your portfolio and plan
Here at Harbor we strive to attend one to two conferences every year to keep our knowledge fresh and encourage new ideas. This conference certainly encouraged critical thought and enabled me to interact with the best in the investing industry.
Harbor Financial Group’s latest newsletter is now available online. Interested readers will find articles on the recent Morningstar Conference, financial planning offerings, and how to find out if you should drive or fly on your next vacation.
Contact us if there is specific topic you would like to see in a future issue.
Quarterly Webinar – Q3 2011
Please join us on Thursday, October 20th at 12:15 pm for our fourth and final quarterly conference call of 2011.
Elyse D. Foster, CFP® , Karen Didde, CFP® and Jordan Kunz, CFA will review third quarter portfolio performance and discuss our current market outlook. Q&A will follow the presentation.
Register at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/242053898