…check out Chart Chooser.
It’s a website that suggests chart formats for each of six purposes:
Plus, it provides free PowerPoint or Excel templates that you can load your data into.
I learned about this resource from Ann Wylie’s Revving Up Readership newsletter. Thanks, Ann!
Your clients may benefit from life coach Cheryl Richardson’s advice on how to minimize the emotional toll of the stock market’s gyrations.
Richardson suggests:
Read more in Richardson’s Oct. 13 Life Makeover newsletter.
“The most important thing to communicate is that you are well aware of how scary the markets are and that you understand your clients are worried. However, it is imperative that you also convey a sense of calmness and optimism,” says Harold Evensky of Evensky & Katz in “Client Communications in Volatile Markets.” His article appeared in a special edition of the CFA Institute’s wealth management e-newsletter.
Are you using this strategy? Is it working for you?
Young people are “The Surprising Winners in the Financial Crisis.”
They’ll be better able to afford housing than their parents, says blogger Andrew O’Connell.
Moreover, “With more affordable housing, young people might actually be able to win back some of the earning power that the American middle class has been steadily losing to globalization and offshoring.”
There’s something positive you can discuss with your clients.
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Susan B. Weiner, CFA
Check out my website at www.InvestmentWriting.com or sign up for my free monthly e-newsletter.
Copyright 2008 by Susan B. Weiner All rights reserved
For a reassuring take on financial markets’ resilience and the future of diversified portfolios, watch “Is It Different This Time?” by Weston Wellington of Dimensional Fund Advisors.
As an editor, I was impressed by how Wellington used images of magazine and newspaper headlines to convey how wrong alarmists have been on many occasions.
Thank you, Russell Wild, for pointing out this presentation.
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Susan B. Weiner, CFA
Check out my website at www.InvestmentWriting.com or sign up for my free monthly e-newsletter.
Copyright 2008 by Susan B. Weiner All rights reserved
Dealing with market volatility is a full-time job.
For us. Not you.
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The headline copied above works. It got me to pick up a brochure about the Fidelity Portfolio Advisory Service.
Why does it work?
First, it raises the reader’s anxiety with “dealing with market volatility is a full-time job.” But that isn’t enough. The brochure quickly offers a solution: Fidelity will handle volatility for you.
Consider trying to apply this model to your written communications.
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Susan B. Weiner, CFA
Check out my website at www.InvestmentWriting.com or sign up for my free monthly e-newsletter.
Copyright 2008 by Susan B. Weiner All rights reserved
Marketers of investment strategies marketed using performance composites will have to learn new recommendations and rules once GIPS 2010 goes into effect. If you’re a reader of marketing materials for separate accounts, you will find new information to digest.
GIPS is short for Global Investment Performance Standards. The next draft of GIPS standards will be issued for public comment in early 2009, with new standards to be issued in early 2010 and to become effective on January 1, 2011, according to a presentation on “GIPS Update: What to Expect in 2010” by Sunette Mulder, chair of the GIPS Executive Committee and Investment Manager Subcommittee, and Karyn Vincent, chair of the GIPS Interpretations Subcommittee. They spoke at the CFA Institute’s GIPS Standards Annual Conference on Sept. 25.
I nodded my head when Vincent said that common practice in the U.S. is to show 10 years of investment composite performance and to drop off the eleventh year once an additional year of performance is completed. I remember salespeople gleefully anticipating when a bad year would drop off the bar graph.
However, the draft of GIPS 2010 will recommend that firms show more than 10 years of history. That was just one of many points made by Vincent and Mulder.
Another change that will impact marketers: the composite description must be expanded to include “enough information to understand all of the key characteristics, including risks, of the composite strategy.” Apparently it was felt that firms don’t adequately discuss risks.
Speaking of risk, another innovation is to require disclosure of a risk measure such as standard deviation for the composite and the benchmark for the most recent three-year period. If standard deviation isn’t the best risk statistic, you may show additional statistics.
If you don’t like what you’re hearing–or if you think some of these ideas should definitely get implemented–remember you’ll have an opportunity to give feedback on the draft of GIPS 2010. You can keep up at the GIPS Standards website.
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Susan B. Weiner, CFA
Check out my website at www.InvestmentWriting.com or sign up for my free monthly e-newsletter.
Copyright 2008 by Susan B. Weiner All rights reserved
Better client reporting on investments is on the horizon, according to “The Future of Performance Measurement,” a Sept. 25 presentation by Stefan Illmer, head of client reporting for Credit Suisse, at the CFA Institute’s GIPS Standards Annual Conference in Boston.
There is “increasing pressure to provide analytics…from the client’s point of view” in addition to providing them for the portfolio manager. That translates into:
Illmer also foresees more reporting for clients’ total portfolios, incorporating clients’ externally held assets such as real estate, private equity, assets held with other custodians, and advisory accounts.
An audience member asked how firms can aggregate client portfolios for look-through given the 90-day delay in mutual funds reporting their holdings. Illmer replied that the data exists because it is used for daily net asset value calculations. He believes that pressure from clients may eventually win the release of this data.
For a related post, see “Financial crisis will change client reporting, according to Credit Suisse executive.”
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Susan B. Weiner, CFA
Check out my website at www.InvestmentWriting.com or sign up for my free monthly e-newsletter.
Copyright 2008 by Susan B. Weiner All rights reserved
In response to my question about how the current financial crisis will impact performance measurement and reporting, Stefan Illmer, head of client reporting for Credit Suisse, said that the investment industry needs standards for client reporting.
He said he wasn’t referring to performance reporting to clients, but to a broader array of topics such as valuation, pricing, transparency, and disclosures.
For example, if a firm regularly runs return attribution software, it will immediately notice when a bond defaults because there will be no price for the bond. Of course, that assumes that the firm doesn’t let the portfolio manager define the price for the bond.
Illmer answered my question during the Q&A section of his Sept. 25 presentation on “The Future of Performance Measurement” at the CFA Institute’s GIPS Standards Annual Conference in Boston.
_________________
Susan B. Weiner, CFA
Check out my website at www.InvestmentWriting.com or sign up for my free monthly e-newsletter.
Copyright 2008 by Susan B. Weiner All rights reserved
Jargon is a barrier to your effective communication with clients. But sometimes it’s hard for you to think of a replacement for a term like “secular” that’s convenient shorthand for communication among investment professionals.
Google definitions can help
You can always do a Google search to define terms that may derail your client. For example, inputting “define: credit default swap” will yield some definitions that you can paraphrase for your client’s benefit.
But sometimes a Google search doesn’t cut the mustard.
For example, investment strategists often talk about secular trends. But “define: secular trend” yielded no definitions when I tried it recently. And “define: secular” spoke about the term only as the opposite of “religious.”
Online investment glossaries fill the gap
Sometimes an investment glossary comes to the rescue.
Here’s what Investopedia says when I input “secular.”
Sometimes it pays to go to investment glossaries.
Here are some options:
Your recommendation?
What investment glossaries do YOU recommend?