What Jason Zweig does right–and wrong–in his inaugural column

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“Stop Worrying, and Learn to Love the Bear.”

I love the title of Jason Zweig’s inaugural “The Intelligent Investor” column for The Wall Street Journal. With this title, Zweig follows advice I give to writers of investment commentary. He takes something that’s viewed as negative and finds the positive side. That’s a great way to grab your reader’s attention.

Zweig says, “…if you are still in your saving and investing years, a bear market is a gift from the financial gods — and the longer it lasts, the better off you will be. Instead of running from the bear, you should embrace him.” So that’s his thesis. 

But Zweig falls short in explaining how the bear market will help investors, other than offering the opportunity to buy good stocks cheaply. He gives the example of how the last long bear market—1969-1982—set the stage for stocks to return 18.5% a year for the 18 years following the bear market’s end.

Let’s assume—and it’s a big assumption—that scenario will repeat. Then, sure, folks who are just starting their saving and investing would end up better off. But what about those who are in the midst of their saving and investing? Will they ever make up their losses?

Website demystifies confusing words

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NOTE: The Confusing Words website no longer exists. 

Try searching  the Common Errors in English Usage website. Or, search in Google for the confusing pair, for example, “capitol vs. capital” to check if you’re right.

The Confusing Words website clarifies the differences between sets of two or more frequently confused words. Visit it when you’re confused about which word to use.

According to the website, some classic pairs of misunderstood or misused words include:

  • Affect vs. effect
  • Capitol vs. capital
  •  Affluent vs. effluent — I’ll bet there aren’t any financial advisors who make this mistake!
  • Atheist vs. agnostic

I read about this in Daphne Gray-Grant’s Power Writing e-newsletter.

April 9, 2013 update: Common Errors in English Usage covers some similar information. Thanks, @Blano, for bringing it to my attention!

March 23, 2018: I updated this post to reflect the disappearance of the Confusing Words website.

 

"Should you use quotes like PIMCO’s Bill Gross?"

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If you don’t subscribe to my e-newsletter, you missed “Should you use quotes like PIMCO’s Bill Gross?” 

This article appeared exclusively in my e-newsletter and provided advice on how to use one of Gross’ investment commentary techniques.

A great way for financial advisors to leverage existing content

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A blog can be a great way for financial advisors to leverage their inventory of compliance-approved articles. That’s according to my interview with Stuart Zimmerman, principal, and Jim Cornfeld, investment advisor, The Buckingham Family of Financial Services. However, it’s too early to tell if the blog will yield financial benefits.

Cornfeld started The Educated Investor blog in February, after the Financial Executives Networking Group (FENG) St. Louis offered to host blogs for its members on its website. “The group is a good demographic for us. It fits one of our niches: corporate executives,” he said.

The firm’s additional goals for the blog include:

  1. Serving as an easy place to refer clients and prospects for useful, educational articles
  2. Potentially attracting new business from web surfers who find it through online searches

Zimmerman said the blog is already handy for achieving goal number one. However, “We haven’t received any calls from prospects saying ‘We saw your blog.’ ” On the other hand, some of their articles, such as their interview with Harvard’s David Laibson and an article on geographic diversification of muni bond investing, have ranked highly in Google’s Blog Search.

Financial advisors who want to blog face two challenges: 1) compliance; 2) content generation. Buckingham may be better positioned than your typical investment advisor. Their business model includes generating a good many compliance-approved articles for use in their newsletter and for use by the 116 RIA firms that use their back office services for passive investing. “We already invested time writing these articles for other purposes,” said Cornfeld.

Another strategy that Buckingham uses to manage compliance issues: It doesn’t allow comments on its blog posts. If Buckingham wanted to reply to reader comments, it would have to run its responses through Compliance.

Talking with Cornfeld and Zimmerman got me thinking about “The Real ROI of Blogging,” an article on MarketingProfs’ Daily Fix blog. Blogger Lewis Green measures the ROI on his blog not just in terms of profits, revenue or new business leads and referrals. He also considers the blog’s impact in terms of getting his firm noticed and improving his customers’ experience and loyalty. Financial advisors should also consider these benefits.

"Tool: Google Trends"

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Google Trends will help you figure out which of your key words are searched most frequently.

Learn more in “Tool: Google Trends” on Erik Sherman’s Writer Biz blog.

Advice from the SEC’s expert on plain English

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The SEC has tapped William Lutz to lead its “21st Century Disclosure Initiative.”

In honor of his appointment, here’s his “Rules for Writing Plain English: How You Can Write Plain Language by Just Following These 39 Steps” (2018 update: sorry, but his article is no longer available on the website of the Plain Language Association International).

Writing plain English isn’t as easy as the title suggests.

For example, Step 5 is “Keep equivalent items parallel.” Even if you understand what that means, I’ll bet that many people don’t. The article offers a good example of parallel structure. Each of the 39 steps begins with a verb in the same tense. Each uses an imperative verb–a verb that commands you to do something. Parallelism can involve more than just tense, as you’ll see in the Online Writing Lab’s explanation of parallel structures. Using parallel structure in lists makes it easier for your readers to understand you.

Generally, “less is more” applies to writing. But sometimes deleting words can land you in trouble. Lutz gives a good example of that with the “whiz-deletion” he describes at the bottom of his article.

E-mail tips from Seth Godin

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The email checklist at Seth Godin’s blog starts out with some good tips on slimming your email distribution list.

I also liked his suggestion of asking whether your email is important enough that you’d spend the price of a postage stamp on it.

I’m glad that Erika Dreifus’ Practicing Writing blog sent me to this post.

Your website’s "About Us" page could make the sale

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The company information in your website’s “About Us” page could make the difference between winning or losing a new client.

“Although it might not solely make a purchase, a bad ‘About Us’ page can definitely stop a purchase from happening,” according to “Why You Must Pay More Attention to Your ‘About Us’ Page” on the MarketingSherpa website.

Keep your “About Us” page up-to-date and filled with information that will convince your prospects’ executives of your firm’s reliability, advises MarketingSherpa.

"Lazy Bastards: How We Read Online"

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“Lazy Bastards: How We Read Online,” Michael Agger’s article on Slate.com, gives some good tips for grabbing your online readers’ attention. He reinforces points I often make, including the value of using:

  • White space
  • Bullet points
  • Informative subheadings

Agger also sends you over to “Long vs. Short Articles as Content Strategy” by website usability guru Jakob Nielsen. Short articles beat long articles most of the time, says Nielsen, especially if you want to maximize your readership numbers.

On the other hand—and this is important for financial advisors—if you want people who really need a solution, focus on comprehensive coverage. This is a good strategy if you sell highly targeted solutions to complicated problems.

Still, in Nielsen’s example, “short” is defined as 700 words and “long” as 1,000 words. One thousand words isn’t long compared to some pieces that I’ve seen.

For a competing opinions on going longer or shorter, read my post, “What’s too long for a blog post?“

Note: I updated this post on Jan. 23, 2017.

 

 

 

 

P&I picks best financial blogs

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According to the staff at Pensions & Investments magazine, the top three financial blogs are:

  1. The Big Picture
  2. DealBreaker
  3. Infectious Greed

That’s according to to “Pensions & Investments’ Best Blogs and how they got that way,” which also lists some other top blogs.

But blogs get mixed reviews from P&I’s audience. “Turns out some tout the virtues of having fresh and sometimes entertaining voices and unique perspectives not found in typical Wall Street research, while others eschew blogs as unnecessary,” reported Drew Carter in “Ranking the blogs.”

What do you think? Are blogs useful to you?