HB Clients Featured in Philly Inquirer, Advisor News and Accounting Today

From stock market forecasts, to the dollar’s impact on emerging markets, to getting your firm to the next level of growth, HB clients educated the national financial media last week.

With respect to the dollar’s impact on emerging markets, our client Matt Topley (@MattTopley), chief investment officer of Valley Forge, PA-based Fortis Wealth told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the greenback’s strength has hurt emerging markets where the majority of debt is dollar-denominated. As a result, emerging market stock markets sold off and are extremely cheap, explained Topley. “One fund we use for clients and which is my biggest position personally is DFA Emerging Market Value” (symbol: DFEVX), The fund trades at below book value, which is a buying opportunity,” Topley added.  The key takeaway is that if you think the president and other factors will push down the dollar, then this may be a point in time to start buying emerging markets.

Meanwhile, HB clients Bill Schultheis and James Nevers (Soundmark Wealth Management) told Advisor News last week that “There is nothing on the horizon that leads us to believe a bear market is imminent.” Soundmark’s forecast calls for muted economic global growth on the horizon as they explained in an Advisor News piece entitled Are Investors Losing Faith In The Stock Market?

Kirkland, Washington-based Soundmark expects common stocks to return somewhere in the 5 percent-to-7 percent range. “We have incorporated these conservative estimates into our clients' projections,” they added.

Meanwhile, our client Kyle Walters (@AtlasCFO), a partner at Dallas-based L&H CPAs and Advisors just published his latest guest column in Accounting Today (Are you committed to being a better firm or just interested?).

This is the time of year that CPA firms like to have their offsite retreats in which great ideas are bandied about, but rarely implemented upon returning to the office. To break through this inertia, Walters wrote that you have to set a realistic timeline for implementing change. “Start with a bite-size chunk that you can commit to implementing in the next 90 days—a change that will have a big impact on your firm and the value you’re delivering to clients. Call those your ‘90-day rocks.’ Don’t do five things—just do one.’”

Conclusion

Whether investing or overseeing a professional service firm, the winners today are those that set realistic expectations and always follow through on what they promise. That’s what our highest performing clients have figured out—and the media is taking notice. As Warren Buffet famously said, “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

TAGS:  Soundmark Wealth, James Nevers, Bill Schultheis, Advisor News, Kyle Walters, Accounting Today, L&H CPAs, Warren Buffet

March Madness or Method? Part 1

In many parts of the country, there’s still too much snow on the ground to hear lawn mowers humming or baseball bats cracking. But trust me, spring really is here. I know because the annual NCAA men’s basketball tournament—a.k.a March Madness—is underway. Just don’t expect a highly productive month around the office.

Depending on your point of view, the three-week long hoop-fest is either the biggest office productivity killer of the year, or a fascinating window into human behavior, biases and predictive modeling. March Madness is also pretty good for building camaraderie, even if the HR wonks will complain that it’s an unsanctioned company event, that it’s male- and jock-biased and that it’s basically an illegal gambling operation conducted on company premises, using company time and computers. Again, review the previous sentence about “camaraderie.”

Level playing field

It’s also one of those rare times when Ted from sales, who’s 6-foot-6 and played power forward in college, can get schooled by 5-foot-2 Mary from accounting, who’s never set foot on the hardwood, much less played the game. How? Because she knows how to fill out her brackets.

The format is simple; 64 of the best college basketball teams are invited to play each other in a single-elimination, winner take all tournament. Win and you advance to the next round. Lose and you go home. No best of seven, no do-overs. No bonus points for giving it your best. You could be 34-0 during the regular season, like Kentucky, and have an off night against unheraled Hampton University and that’s it. Season over. See you in November.

In most office pools, you print out the entire tournament “bracket” before the games begin. You predict which team you think will win each matchup and throw a few bucks into the pot. Most folks can fill out their bracket in 10 minutes or less, whether using pencil, pen or an app. If you end up winning the pool, you can make anywhere from 20- to 1,000-times your money back. If you lose, the max downside is usually less than $20, so you don’t even need puts or stop loss orders. Either way, it’s a pretty good ROI for three weeks of fun.

So how hard can it be to win? Everyone has access to the same information--they even give you each team’s won-loss record as well as their seeding (i.e. ranking) in the tournament. Just pick the team with the better record or higher seeding and you’re good to go, You don’t even have to guess the score or the point spread. Just who will win.

So why does Warren Buffet offer a $1 billion cash prize (that’s with a “B”) to anyone who can pick a perfect bracket and guess the outcome of all 63 games correctly?
Because, it’s almost impossible to predict all the upsets. It’s like trying to pick which early stage startup company with no revenue or earning is going to go public next year. In fact the odds of winning March Madness are worse than the lottery--about 4.3 billion to 1. The odds are beyond stacked against us, but tens of millions of us can’t help ourselves from filling out at least one bracket every March—even if we don’t follow college basketball or never played the game.

Conclusion

In our next post, we’ll tell you about some of the research services, rating agencies and indices you can use to help you along. Hint: It’s pretty hard to beat the wisdom of the crowd? Any of this sounding familiar?

Our blog has more, as does the FREE Resources page of our website.

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TAGS: March Madness, wisdom of the crowd, brackets, office camaraderie

Billionaire Buffet Offers Plain Talk Tax Solution

Online viewers watch more long form videos thanks to tablets

Consumers who stream TV shows, movies and sporting events are increasingly tapping their tablets when they tune in, with tablet video viewers watching 54 percent more long-form videos than they did at the start of the year, according to video technology and streaming provider Ooyala in a new report analyzing video habits of nearly 200 million unique viewers across devices for Q3.

Researchers said tablet owners spent 71 percent of their total tablet video viewing time watching videos 10 minutes or longer. What’s more, the report said the overall share of tablet video viewing grew 90 percent in the past two quarters, an increase from 46 percent in the first quarter. That’s a significant rise in a short period of time, and suggests that tablets are becoming akin to second TVs for many who have them.

I’m in B2B, so why do I care? You care because your target customers (and their families) are also savvy, device-equipped consumers. Whenever you direct them to one of your webinars, podcasts, thought leadership videos or whitepapers, they’re more likely than not watching them on a tablet or smart phone. And they expect a professional quality experience from you.

Your customers, clients and prospects are watching “TV” more than they’re reading at work at home and on the go. But, that doesn’t mean you can be cheap or careless about what you put into your videos. Do it right, or don’t do it at all. 
Your customers will thank you and be more likely to refer you.

Buffet Straight Talk on Taxes



In a New York Times editorial today, Warren E. Buffett, billionaire head of Berkshire Hathaway, threw out some pragmatic ideas about taxing the ultra-wealthy and a smarter definition of the minimum threshold for “wealthy” in this country (hint it’s not $250K a year). Regardless of the motive for Buffet’s altruistic intentions, we agree with buffet that $250K annual adjusted gross income does not make one ultra-wealthy in many of the places you readers hail from: the Bay Area, Southern California, the Northeast, South Florida……His suggestion for $500,000 is a start.

What we liked more about Buffet’s op-ed is that he argues for Congress to get started on a few pieces of must-have tax reform, rather than straightening out the whole labyrinth IRC which could take years—and give opponents plenty of time to stall and continue reaping aggregious gains.

For instance, Buffet argues for a minimum tax on truly high incomes ASAP—at say 30 percent of taxable income between $1 million and $10 million, and 35 percent on amounts above that. “A plain and simple rule like that will block the efforts of lobbyists, lawyers and contribution-hungry legislators to keep the ultra-rich paying rates well below those incurred by people with income just a tiny fraction of ours. Only a minimum tax on very high incomes will prevent the stated tax rate from being eviscerated by these warriors for the wealthy.”

Again, we’re advocating the removal of uncertainty—we’re not advocating removal of incentives to get rich and be successful. That’s the American way and it’s in our DNA….just like Black Friday shopping.

Buffet says our government’s goal should be to bring in revenues of 18.5 percent of G.D.P. and spend about 21 percent of G.D.P. — “levels that have been attained over extended periods in the past and can clearly be reached again.” According to Buffet it was about 15 percent in and 22 percent out last year.

“All of America is waiting for Congress to offer a realistic and concrete plan for getting back to this fiscally sound path. Nothing less is acceptable.”

Amen to that.

TAGS: Warren Buffet, $250,000, taxes on wealthy, online video habits, tablets, Berkshire Hathaway, Ooyala

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