Category: Published Articles
-
How to Not Make Christmas Awkward: a method for cultivating positive dynamics in business families
One of the unique challenges for family businesses is family dynamics, explored by Sasha Lund and Franklin J Parker. They recommend a range of strategies to minimise points of friction, such as educating the next generation, establishing negative space (points of little importance to stakeholders), exploring power dynamics in detail and putting healthy boundaries in…
-
Crypto’s Unanswered Question: At What Price?
How do you make buy and sell decisions with cryptoassets? The answer remains elusive.
-
The great man fallacy and family governance
When Philip II of Macedon rose to power in 359 BCE, his kingdom was a mess. Macedon had been defeated by the Illyrians, and his eastern flank had been invaded and sacked by the Paeonians and Thracians. Worse, the Athenians had landed on the coast with a would-be usurper to his throne. Over the course…
-
RIA of the Future: Rebuilding Your Firm Around Goals-Based Investing (Part 3 of 3)
Wealth management, as an industry, is slow to change. Perhaps some of that is justified – if clients are happy and continue to pay fees, why invest significant time and money in a whole new approach? But clients are not happy, and we all know the business is changing. Fee compression and the long attrition…
-
Investing for Life: Why I Believe in Goals-Based Investing (Part 1 of 3)
Never once, in my 15-plus years managing wealth, has someone complained about their portfolio rising too quickly. The inverse, of course, is not true: I’ve fielded plenty of complaints about markets dragging portfolios down. Yet both are examples of volatility, and according to traditional portfolio theory, volatility should be minimized – both on the upside…
-
Investing for life: Why I believe in goals-based investing
Goals-based investing is more than a marketing buzzword, in this first of three articles with CityWire, I detail the differences…
-
Wealth Management in the Algocen Era: A Speculative Future
What does investing look like in 2038?
-
Bernoulli’s Prisoner’s Dilemma: A Goals-Based Perspective
In 1738, the Swiss mathematician and physicist Daniel Bernoulli proposed a simple thought experiment: “A rich prisoner who possesses two thousand ducats but needs two thousand ducats more to repurchase his freedom, will place a higher value on a gain of two thousand ducats than does another man with less money than he.” Let’s continue to play this…
-
On Horses, Tractors, and Markets
Growing up on a cattle ranch in central Texas, I developed a certain respect for the tools of the trade. Horses, tractors, trucks, trailers, bailing wire, and duct tape we all daily-use items for us. Each tool has its purpose, of course, and each tool has advantages and disadvantages for a particular job. Take, for…
-
Why You Should Be a Goals-Based Investor
Imagine for a moment that you owe a violent loan shark $10,000 by tomorrow morning. But today you have only $7,000. Now suppose you visit an economist for help. You desperately ask, “What am I to do?!” Our economist, being highly trained, administers a risk-tolerance questionnaire to gauge your preferences about risk. As it turns…
Franklin J. Parker, CFA 