So is the financial planning market to be viewed as in DeVincent's eyes? "The same old stuff is not going to cut it." Or does it come down to the view of CPA Robert Carmines, who offers financial planning services, that it takes hard work and study to put together a good plan, but most people, "Spend more time planning their vacation than planning their investments." Of course, lack of planning can be viewed as "the same old stuff" and the lessons are that this isn't easy and perhaps investors should toss in a whiff of the old Wall Street philosophy that "Bulls make money; bears make money; pigs get slaughtered."
Some changes in how advisors deal with the wobbly investment climate came in last year's Survey of Trends in the Financial Planning Industry. Englewood, Colo.-based CFP has not issued a 2010 update to its 2009 report. Since investing is still difficult, the trends probably hold. Among those was the continuing shift of advisors to fee-based practices instead of commissions, shifting clients to larger cash positions and emphasizing client interactions.
For a company like Conshohocken, Penn., eMoney Advisor, which markets a portal that offers account aggregation service, part of the answer is, not surprisingly, aggregation. "Clients are demanding access into their financial picture," says DeVincent. He also says that aggregation provides a solution to one other problem, schemers like Bernard Madoff.
"They are really looking at advisors closely," he continues. They are saying, "I would like to know where my money is at all times," and aggregation lets advisors respond," Here is where the money is. You may not like what the value is, but at least it's there."
The portal also enables the client to collaborate with the advisor when via the Internet, and not just through in-person meetings. DeVincent says portals also enable financial planners to interact with clients' other professional advisors, such as accountants and attorneys, who may have valuable input for the planning process.
CPA Carmines, a partner with Carmines Robbins of Newport News, Va., sees some problems with the aggregation philosophy. One of which is that the investment custodians often don't have the cost basis of investments. He recalls a holding in his father's account in which the custodian didn't have the cost basis "even though they had sold it to him."
Carmines, whose firm uses 1st Global as its broker/dealer, also disagrees with an often-stated conclusion, voiced by DeVincent, that diversification strategies failed because all investments tanked to roughly the same degree. "Fixed income hardly went down at all," he says. "Your serious money needs to be diversified for the long haul."
His firm also follows an investment philosophy of passive management of mutual fund investments. "We are not looking to time the market. We are looking at time in the market," he says. That doesn't mean staying in forever - there will need to be responses to negative events so that clients don't' ride an investment to the market's bottom.
As to the "Pigs get slaughtered" axiom, it's clear the returns of the glory days aren't possible. Carmines notes at one point in the past decade, clients were looking for returns of 20 percent and more. And that's just not possible now.
If we can do a 3 percent to 4 percent return on your portfolio we are probably doing well," he says.
