Tag: ETF Investment portfolio planning

One silver lining to come out of the pandemic has been the significant increase in giving to support those impacted the most. According to Giving USA, charitable giving in the U.S. reached a record $471.44 billion in 2020, up 5.1% from 2019. 1 As of June 2021, charitable giving has nudged even higher with a 6.1% increase over the prior 12 months. 2   As the giving season approaches, consider these four ways to maximize your giving power while potentially minimizing your tax liability. 

A rising dollar could portend to a global slowdown as investors pile into safe haven assets like the U.S. dollar amid headwinds like rising inflation and lower economic growth.

An equal weight exchange traded fund strategy could help offset risk as a sell-off drags on large-cap U.S. stocks. U.S. equities slipped on Tuesday as rising inflationary pressures weighed on the earnings season outlook. “Investors are running around like chickens with their heads cut off,” John Buckingham, portfolio manager at Kovitz, told the Wall Street Journal .

Some exchange traded funds purport to deliver efficient core exposures, but that’s a mission the WisdomTree U.S. Efficient Core Fund (NTSX) lives and breathes. Actively managed, NTSX puts a new, more relevant spin on the old 60/40 equity/fixed income split by employing a “90/60 Efficient Core” strategy  that features exposure to the 500 largest domestic stocks and Treasury futures contracts.

In addition to low costs and robust liquidity, one of the primary reasons that investors flock to index funds and exchange traded funds tracking popular domestic equity indexes such as the S&P 500 is diversification. Or so they think.

It’s an ongoing debate amongst advisors as to whether active or passive funds are better, with research to support either kind being touted. Increasingly, asset managers are coming to the conclusion that portfolios with both can provide optimal returns, reports Yahoo Finance .

ESG has taken a serious foothold in the investing world and continues expanding, with $51.1 billion inflows into some variety of sustainability funds in 2020, a twofold increase over 2019 and 10 times the amount for 2018, reports the Wall Street Journal .

The year so far has been a stellar one for equity investors, but mostly associated with major market averages like the S&P 500, which has been up for seven consecutive months. There have been 54 new closing highs for the S&P 500 so far this year.

Too much of a good thing can apply to equities exposure, and with exchange traded funds (ETFs) like the Invesco S&P 500® Equal Weight ETF ( RSP B+ ), holdings get equal billing to help balance portfolios. As Invesco’s website puts it, RSP prevents investors from “putting your eggs in one basket.” It can be easy to fall into the trap of allocating too heavily into one or more stocks to extract maximum gains, such as big tech heavy-hitters like Apple or Amazon.

 JPMorgan Asset Management plans to convert four mutual fund portfolios into ETFs in early 2022. The firm cited the continued convergence of mutual funds and ETFs as well as the benefits of intraday liquidity, transparency, and potential tax benefits of ETFs in explaining its plans to seek fund board approval for the change.

When investors think about retirement plans, many focus on putting away cash and then investing it wisely to grow their nest egg. But there’s a critical piece of retirement income planning that’s often overlooked: a strategy to withdraw those carefully tended savings.

How can investors prioritize both growth and income? This  FlexShares strategy  is a great place to start. “We believe companies may prioritize stability over profitability by re-routing their supply chains, moving production inside their home countries, and building healthier balance sheets,” a FlexShares Fund Focus said. “After the stimulus-induced surge, global growth may settle at low levels.”