With great wealth comes great responsibility, but also incredible opportunity.
Janet Kim Sing
Too often I see married women deferring financial matters to their spouses. Women should feel empowered when it comes to learning more about wealth creation and stewardship.
Exchange-Traded Funds or ETFs can be a useful tool for those DIY investors venturing out into the world of investing, but not necessarily wanting the task of individual stock picking. However, there are some things to bear in mind when investing in ETFs.
If you are not a professional in the investment industry, and sometimes even if you are, it can be difficult to evaluate the ins and outs of any particular investment. Deciphering the fine print, especially when it comes to evaluating risk, can be especially difficult.
As we've discussed in previous posts, risk is a broad measure requiring context-based evaluation, with overall risk reflecting the combined impact of various factors, so in assessing a client’s risk tolerance, we use a multi-pronged approach that goes beyond a simple questionnaire.
Standard deviation, or volatility, is a popular, easily quantified risk measure used to classify investments from low to high risk; however, focusing solely on volatility gives an incomplete view of an investment's risk.
Talking about risk can be tricky, as there are so many different categories of risk. This is why we are just choosing to highlight a few categories today.
If you have ever been in the market for a home, you have likely gone through the experience of having to make some concessions on your wish list. Similarly, when finding a Portfolio Manager and/or Investment Firm it is likely that there will be something that you are not overly excited about and that is completely normal. I would even go so far as to say that if everything seems too perfect, that is a red flag!
One of the first questions you should be asking in your initial meetings is what professional license or oversight body a firm belongs to, if this has not already been disclosed or isn’t clear. There are, in fact, several regulatory bodies that exist. Make sure that you know which one the firm in question falls under and what that means.
