Investors withdrawing money from their portfolios are often concerned about the “probability of ruin,” where ruin is defined as the depletion of the portfolio prior to either a fixed date, or prior to a random date such as the end of retirement (i.e., the end of one’s lifetime). Read this article to gain insight on how to manage those needs with the reality of today’s volatile markets.

This article was co-written by Patrick Collins and Josh Stampfli. It was published in the December 2009 issue of the Banking Law Journal.

This article was co-written by Patrick Collins, Huy Lam, and Josh Stampfli.

This article was co-written by Patrick Collins and Josh Stampfli and published in the November/December 2007, Wealth Strategies Journal.

What Trustees Should Know about Asset Management Approaches and Rebalancing Elections

Life Cycle funds are becoming more and more popular in the retirement savings investment community. Read more about how they are constructed and used in this article, originally published in Retirement Counseling, Society of Financial Service Professionals (June 2006).

This is a four part series on the administration of life insurance as an asset of trust. It was published in “The American College of Trust and Estate Journal.” ACTEC

Article 1) Trustee Administration of Life Insurance;
Article 2) Standards of Prudence and Management of the Insurance Portfolio;
Artile 3) Evidencing Care, Skill and Caution in The Management of ILITs; and
Article 4) ILIT Asset Management: The Written Investment Policy Statement.

Selecting actively managed investment strategies for all, or a portion, of trust assets can be difficult. Herein we describe the process of identifying superior active managers, and metrics fiduciaries could use to document the prudence of their manager selection process.

This article examines the pros and cons of investing in commodities-related investments. The question of whether or not to include it in a portfolio has no easy answers. Finding suitable and prudent investment vehicles can be even more daunting, but we have some insights.

The paper begins with a brief recap of recent fiduciary surcharge cases in which defendants were found in breach of their duties because of failure to establish a credible basis upon which to exercise investment discretion. In several cases, the lack of a well-articulated, fully documented, and suitable investment strategy was, in itself, found to be a fiduciary breach. The paper also works through the question: ‘what constitutes a prudent decision making process?’ — i.e., allows for the exercise of reasonable (and defensible) trustee discretion.

This article summarizes academic research into multifactor asset pricing models, with specific emphasis on growth and value stocks. The article notes that empirical studies observe that value stocks typically generate superior risk-adjusted returns relative to growth stocks, and addresses implications for future equity investments if, in fact, the value premium is not a priced risk factor.