Financial advisors often promote their services by saying that they can help remove emotions from investing. In theory, advisors can use a variety of risk management tools, knowledge of capital markets, and long-term investing perspectives to help their clients avoid making costly knee jerk reactions.

Brexit is just one example, but it can be a powerful case study for advisors seeking to help clients understand why emotions should be curtailed by financial professionals who are armed with capital markets expertise.

In the months leading up to the Brexit referendum, markets climbed and declined in response to changing expectations for how the country’s citizens would vote. In the final days before the vote, investor sentiment strengthened as pundits increasingly said a vote in favor of the U.K. pulling out of the European Union was unlikely.

Many investors had previously feared that Brexit would hinder economic growth in Europe and create a challenging environment for U.S. companies and business in other countries that sell products in the continent.

Indeed, Brexit is likely to mean that U.K. will have to forge new trade agreements with individual members of the European Union and is likely to have to do the same with U.S. exporters.

When the Brexit referendum surprisingly determined that voters want to leave the U.K., panic ensured. On June 24, when the results were released, U.S. equities dropped approximately 3%. It was the worst single-day decline for the S&P 500 in nearly a year and wiped away the index’s gain for 2016, according CNBC.

By the end of June 27, the index had dropped 4.07%. The decline, however, was only temporary. Indeed, during the last three days of June, the S&P climbed 4.95% and, as of July 8, had generated a total return of 4.21% year-to-date.

Investors who panicked by selling in the days immediately after Brexit are likely to have sold during a dip, only to miss the strong returns when equities bounced back. With that in mind, advisors should explain to their clients that panic selling often results in selling low and then missing out on the strong returns that typically follow market dips.

They should explain, furthermore, that using portfolio diversification to cushion declines, maintaining a long-term perspective, and understanding the role of corporate fundamentals can go a long way in helping investors avoid panic selling.

Advisors should develop illustrations that show how having a mix of asset classes could have reduced the impact upon a portfolio of the post-Brexit market decline and that portfolio rebalancing may have resulted in buying equities during the market dip.

They should also show index performance numbers that illustrate how riding out historical market declines, including the correction associated with the Great Recession, would have allowed investors to recoup losses and then eventually achieve additional gains.

Finally, advisors should point out that corporate fundamentals don’t justify a major prolonged market correction. While overall corporate earnings in the U.S. have taken a hit due to cheap oil, many industries, such as Information Technology, are experiencing strong sales and improving profits.

Innovation, meanwhile, is allowing companies like Amazon.com and Netflix to rapidly grow their earnings by disrupting traditional business models with technology. At the same time, corporations are holding near record levels of cash, which is allowing them to buy back stock, launch dividends, and conduct mergers and acquisitions at near record levels.

All of those actions provide additional support to stock prices. The U.S. economy is also likely to support corporate fundamentals. While U.S. economic growth has been slow, many developments are encouraging, with the labor market strengthening, real estate values increasing, and consumers’ finances improving.

Collecting Social Security early can help retirees assess how much they can spend because the payments are consistent. So reports Wealth Management.

Also, proponents of waiting typically point to the 8% payment increase you get for delaying the payments. However, the nominal annualized reture when waiting a year is less than 8% and retirees will miss out on a full year of payments. 

Lastly, collecting Social Security may be more attractive than withdrawing money from an IRA when considering taxes.

Read the full article from Wealth Management.

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently awarded a whistleblower $3 million for information that helped the regulator crack a complex case of fraud. So reports ThinkAdvisor. The program was established more than three years ago and has paid out more than $50 million to whistleblowers.

Read the full article from Think Advisor.

Robert Renshaw has joined Edison, N.J.-based Fountainhead Capital Management as senior financial strategist. So reports TapintoEdison.

Fountainhead Managing Partner Marc Rock says Renshaw’s strength involves understanding each client’s unique circumstances and partnering with the appropriate team members to create customized strategies.

Read the full release from TapintoEdison.

With last week’s turbulence, some market watchers are wondering when the next big pullback will happen… or if it has already begun. So reports CNN.

Some analysts are concerned about the VIX, which is usually muted when stocks are soaring, because it keeps rising. Some are calling this a red flag. Others are saying the status of the VIX is a “worrisome sign.”

Much of the market rally has baked in the emergence of an effective vaccine to fight against COVID-19. The unprecedented stimulus has also played an important role in the market’s movements this year.

Randy Frederick, Charles Schwab’s vice president of trading and derivatives, said worries about the VIX and stock market rise are a "little overblown," adding he sees it as more of a “caution flag than a panic button."

Frederick pointed to politics and the pandemic as potential reasons for investor uneasiness. Goldman Sachs recently notes that “VIX futures contracts around early November have spiked.”

Read the full article from CNN.

Some of the biggest financial firms are causing excess market volatility and leading to mispricing of company stock, according to a recent analysis. So reports The Financial Times. Those firms are BlackRock, Capital Group, Vanguard, Fidelity and State Street. 

Trading behavior of these firms and the concentration of ownership has led to this volatility. The top 10 biggest institutional investors own more than 25% of the U.S. stock market. 

This renews the question into whether these firms should classified as “systemically important financial institutions” alongside the big banks. That would involve increased regulatory scrutiny, increased costs and reduced profits. 

Read the full article from The Financial Times.

Invesco has filed an exemptive order to license Fidelity’s active, non-transparent equity ETF methodology. So reports Think Advisor.

“The partnership between Fidelity and Invesco will build on both firm’s shared heritage of innovation and strengthen Invesco’s ability to help achieve better outcomes for investors,” Invesco said, according to the article.

Invesco launched its first active transparent ETF in 2008.

Read the full article from Think Advisor.

The financial markets are upended again for the second time in the last 12 years, although the underlying reasons for the volatility are quite different. 

A recent article from CNBC outlined three major differences between then and now and what those differences mean for financial advisors moving forward. 

1 – Banks to Blame

During the Great Recession, the banks were largely to blame. The banks approved mortgages for subprime borrowers in unprecedented numbers, inflated their profits, minimized their risk and ultimately created a housing market bubble that burst. This time around, the market volatility is largely due to uncertainty created because of the virus’ impact. Even though Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, said the economy could contract by as much as 30% during the second quarter, banks are better equipped to weather this storm. For comparison, the biggest quarterly drop during the Great Recession was 8.4%.

2 – Quick Draw

During the Great Recession, Lehman Brothers was allowed to collapse. The Bush and Obama administrations took action—by providing liquidity through TARP and offering fiscal stimulus to the tune of $941 billion.

In the current crisis, the Federal government acted much quicker. The Federal Reserve cut the federal funds rate to almost zero, and kicked off a corporate bond buying program. The Federal government also passed numerous relief and stimulus packages, including a $2 trillion stimulus package in March alone, the month the outbreak exploded in the U.S.

3 – Market Freefall

During the Great Recession, the major stock indexes fell 50% over an 18 month period, which caused many investors to ditch the markets and ultimately miss out on the rebound.

The market freefall during this crisis was much more swift, leaving many investors shellshocked into inaction. For example, the S&P 500 dropped by 34% between Feb. 19 and March 23, the quickest descent into a bear market in history.

Read the full article from CNBC.

Markets don’t like uncertainty and Friday night’s death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg added even more uncertainty to what is shaping up to be a tumultuous fall. So reports MarketWatch. 

The upcoming November Presidential election, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, already has ushered in a fair amount of unpredictability. 

The battle for Ginsberg’s seat began hours after news of her death broke. Shortly thereafter President Trump vowed to provide his nominee and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate would vote on it.

Much of the controversy stems from the treatment of President Obama’s SCOTUS nominee Merrick Garland following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. McConnell refused to hold a vote on Garland and held the seat open for more than a year before President Trump’s nominee Neil Gorsuch could be confirmed by the Senate. At the time, many Republicans, including McConnell insisted no new justices should be voted on in an election year. This time, despite the vacancy coming a little more than a month before the election, McConnell says he will hold the vote.

Michael Every, global strategist at Rabobank, said in a note that the Supreme Court fight “makes the U.S. election even more important and heated than it already was— and harder to call.

Read the full article from MarketWatch.

EJ Pipkin, an LPL Financial Advisor for the Wealth Management Group of American National Bank of Texas, suffered a massive heart attack in the firm’s Rockwell, Texas office earlier this summer. So reports Blue Ribbon News. 

Coworker Amanda Pacheco immediately yelled for help, and Scott Baker, VP of commercial lending at the ANBTX, began CPR. “I could tell he was in distress, and it was just instinct to do everything I could to help him,” Baker said, according to the publication. 

Pipkin underwent major heart surgery, survived the emergency and is doing well today.

Read the full article from Blue Ribbon News.

While markets around the world face the threat of Japanification, its not likely to happen in the U.S., according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. So reports Financial Advisor. 

America is not close to facing the chronic forces characteristic of Japan’s markets the past few decades, JPMorgan notes. One of the items JPMorgan cites is The Fed’s ability to hike rates following the financial crisis. This built confidence that the U.S. didn’t need to live in an indefinite low-rate environment. 

“Taking policy rates to zero with strong forward guidance is only a necessary condition in the road to Japanization of the yield curve,” JPMorgan strategists wrote in a note to clients, according to the article. The note further indicated that the U.S. “is furthest away as the market attributes maximum credibility to the Fed in its reflationary exercise.”

Read the full article from Financial Advisor.

Earlier this month, JPMorgan told senior sales and trading division leaders to prepare themselves and their team members for a return to the office by Sept. 21.

The company also told some vulnerable employees and those with childcare issues that they can continue to work from home.

A week later, as ABC News reports, several JP Morgan Chase traders tested positive for COVID-19 and were sent home from its offices. The company has been “managing individual cases (of employees testing positive) across the firm over the course of the last few months and following appropriate protocols when they occur," said Brian Marchiony, a spokesman.

JPMorgan is one of the first Wall Street banks to try to bring a substantial number of employees back to the office.

Millennial investors and those from Gen Y are looking for financial advisors to broaden the scope of their conversations. Doing so can help deepen trust and increase satisfaction. So reports the National Association of Plan Advisors. 

The finding comes from a new report, entitled Future of Client-Advisor Relationships, from AIG Life & Retirement and the MIT AgeLab. The study is based on a survey of more than 2,000 people ages 30 and 75. 

https://www.lifeandretirement.aig.com/financial-professionals/mit-age-lab-study
In addition to traditional topics related to financial and retirement advice, investors are looking to engage advisors about their career, health, future care, housing, and identity protection.

Read the full article from the National Association of Plan Advisors.

The coronavirus has caused a lot of changes, including the way FAs communicate with clients. And, some of those changes may be permanent. So reports Think Advisor.

In fact 57% of investors noted in a recent poll that communications with their advisor has changed, and 62% say they would keep at least some of the new methods after the pandemic ends. Those new methods include phone calls, emails, video chats, text messages, social media, snail mail and even in-person.

Read the full article from Think Advisor.

Do you have more work than you can handle? Need to hire staff to help? U.S. News & World Report has some tips for you.

Meredith Moore, founder and CEO of Artisan Financial Strategies, said she realized she needed to hire a junior advisor who could work with clients who didn't fit her ideal profile. However, she needed an advisor that had an outlook that aligned with her own. 

Instead of simply placing a help wanted advertisement, she created a paid one-year intensive class focused on practice management. The class had strict rules on attendance and assignments. Candidates had to watch videos, listen to podcasts, and other work that required hours of study. 

Moore also didn’t require the candidate to bring over a big book of business. Instead, she split her cases with him. "There is a misconception that AUM means everything when considering hiring advisors, but actually there are other qualities that often outweigh the importance of AUM," says Ryan Shanks, co-founder and CEO of FA Match, according to the article. 

Shanks also said that hiring a newer advisor gives a firm the opportunity to better mold the individual when it comes to a firm’s culture and when dealing with clients. 

Stoy Hall, for his part, knew he needed to hire two junior advisors. Hall is the executive director and senior wealth advisor at Centric Wealth. He found one junio advisor while speaking on a college campus and the other via LinkedIn after a correspondence over a period of time.

He says that hiring can be difficult. “I learned that not everyone is fit for this industry,” he said, according to the article. “Some people need to experience the corporate side over the independent side." He also said that not everyone is cut out to be in an advisory role, but that doesn’t mean they might not be valuable to your firm. Therefore, advisors should consider what non-advisory roles someone may be able to fill if they seem like they can bring value to a firm.

Other places, like Wambolt & Associates Wealth Management Partners, operate an internship program with the goal of identifying college students close to graduation who may make good hires later on.

Read the full article from U.S. News & World Report. 

A survey of 300 U.S. financial professionals by Natixis Investment Managers found that many advisors feel they need to improve their client-relationship skills. So reports CNBC.

“It’s about being stronger at actively listening and understanding what clients are really saying,” said Dave Goodsell, executive director of Natixis’ Center for Investor Insight, according to the publication. “You’d think if you do that, you’ll have clients with you for a longer period of time.”

Advisors also have a number of views on what they need to do to improve client relationships. They include:

• Getting to know family members and heirs of clients (53%)
• Helping clients avoid making emotional decisions (46%)
• Providing advice beyond investments (41%)
• Managing expectations (37%)
• Client communications (28%)

Read the full article from CNBC.