vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Yes.  The investment world is extremely fast-paced and competitive. There are loads of professional traders with supercomputers working day in and day out to make smarter, faster trade decisions than you. If you try to compete with them, there’s a better than fair chance you’ll lose precious time and money, which kind of defeats the purpose. A good wealth manager: In short, they can save you time and money and help you take the most advantage of your current savings. Or, you can think about it in terms of cost. Most wealth managers charge an annual fee (as a % of the amount invested) for their services. This fee can range anywhere from close to zero, to 0.75% depending upon how sophisticated the strategy is that the money will be invested in, and what kind of additional services they have to offer. Investing in the S&P500 on the behalf of the investor shouldn’t need a fee, but investing in a smart beta or an alpha strategy, that generates returns independent of the market’s movement and certainly commands a fee. But how does one figure if that fee is justified? It is really simple. What is the risk-adjusted performance of the strategy? What is the Sharpe ratio? Large successful funds like Renaissance Technologies and Citadel can charge 3% in addition to 30% of profits because even after that their returns are much better than the market. I have this rule of thumb for money-management fees that I am willing to pay:
The Fools have a range of advice from common-sense to speculative, aimed at different audiences (one hopes). As always, don't take anyone's word for it; think it through and decide whether the risk/reward ratio is really in your favor and how much you can afford to risk. They're good on the basics, but the more advanced they get, the more risk there is that they've got it wrong. That last is true of any advisor unless they have information that the rest of us don't. You can learn some things from their explanations of their reasoning without necessarily taking their conclusions as gospel.
Something that introduces the vocabulary and treats the reader like an intelligent individual? It's a bit overkill for 'retirement', but Yale has a free online course in Financial Markets. It's very light on math, but does a good job establishing jargon and its history. It covers most of the things you'd buy or sell in financial markets, and is presented by Nobel Prize winner Robert Schiller. This particular series was filmed in 2007, so it also offers a good historical perspective of the start of the subprime collapse. There's a number of high profile guest speakers as well. I would encourage you to think critically about their speeches though. If you research what's happened to them after that lecture, it's quite entertaining: one IPO'd a 'private equity' firm that underperformed the market as a whole, another hedge fund manager bought an airline with a partner firm that was arrested for running a ponzi scheme six months later.  The reading list in the syllabus make a pretty good introduction to the field, but keep in mind they're for institutional investors not your 401(k).
yAnother potential tool for you would be a Monte Carlo Simulator.   here's one  http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Business+Fundamentals I know that past performance is no guarantee.....  but I think it's in many cases not exactly a flawed tool, and especially with respect to money managers a good way to find good ones.  If a manager has shown an ability over time to consistently beat the market, yes he might be due for a bad day, but you'd generally expect that they should be able to continue that trend. I'd apply the same logic to pundits.  If their track record sucks, and they constantly seem to whipsaw you with their advice, why listen to them other than
Why would anyone listen to someone else's advice? Because they believe that the person advising them knows better than they do. It's as simple as that.  The fact that you're doing any research at all - indeed, the fact that you know about a site on the internet where personal finance questions get asked and answered - puts you way ahead of the average member of the population when it comes to pensions.  If you think you know better than the SJP adviser (and I don't mean that aggressively, just as a matter of fact), then by all means do your own thing. But remember about unknown unknowns - you don't know everything the adviser might say, depending on your circumstances and changes to them over time...
"I read the book, and I'm willing to believe you'd have a good chance of beating the market with this strategy - it is a reasonable, rational, and mechanical investment discipline. I doubt it's overplayed and overused to the point that it won't ever work again. But only IF you stick to it, and doing so would be very hard (behaviorally). Which is probably why it isn't overplayed and overused already. This strategy makes you place trades in companies you often won't have heard of, with volatile prices. The best way to use the strategy would be to try to get it automated somehow and avoid looking at the individual stocks, I bet, to take your behavior out of it. There may well be some risk factors in this strategy that you don't have in an S&P 500 fund, and those could explain some of the higher returns; for example, a basket of sketchier companies could be more vulnerable to economic events. The strategy won't beat the market every year, either, so that can test your behavior. Strategies tend to work and then stop working (as the book even mentions). This is related to whether other investors are piling in to the strategy and pushing up prices, in part. But also, outside events can just happen to line up poorly for a given strategy; for example a bunch of the ""fundamental index"" ETFs that looked at dividend yield launched right before all the high-dividend financials cratered. Investing in high-dividend stocks probably is and was a reasonable strategy in general, but it wasn't a great strategy for a couple years there. Anytime you don't buy the whole market, you risk both positive and negative deviations from it. Here's maybe a bigger-picture point, though. I happen to think ""beating the market"" is a big old distraction for individual investors; what you really want is predictable, adequate returns, who cares if the market returns 20% as long as your returns are adequate, and who cares if you beat the market by 5% if the market cratered 40%. So I'm not a huge fan of investment books that are structured around the topic of beating the market.
no offense, but clicking through to that guys blog and fund page he seems like a charlatan and a snake oil salesman. It's not surprising that he doesn't like asset manager software because he himself is an asset manager. the software is trying to replace him.  He doesn't make money by beating the market... he makes money by convincing others that he can... he is exactly the type of person that the original article is warning against investing with.
I've had the same thoughts recently and after reading Investing at Level 3 by James Cloonan I believe his thesis that for the passive investor you're giving up too much if you're not 100% in equities. He is clear to point out that you need to be well aware of your withdrawal horizons and has specific tactics for shifting the portfolio when you know you must have the money in the next five years and wouldn't want to pull money out when you're at a market low. The kicker for me was shifting your thought to a plotting a straight line of reasonable expectations on your return. Then you don't worry about how far down you are from your high (or up from your low) but you measure yourself against the expected return and you'll find some real grounding. You're investing for the long term so you're going to see 2-3 bear markets. That isn't the the time to get cold feet and react. Stay put and it will come back. The market gets back to the reasonable expectations very quickly as he confirms in all the bear markets and recessions of any note. He gives guidelines for a passive investing strategy to leverage this mentality and talks about venturing into an active strategy but doesn't go into great depth. So if you're looking to invest more passively this book may be enough to get you rolling with thinking differently than the traditional 70/30 split.
Frankly, the article is mostly right, but I disagree with his specific recommendation.  Why use one of these software services at all?  Put your money into a retirement (or other) account and invest it in index funds.  Beating index funds over the long run is pretty difficult, and if anyone's going to do it, it won't be someone that treats it like a hobby, regardless of whether you pick stocks yourself or let some software do it for you.  I personally think the big value-add from investment advisers only comes in the form of tax and regulation advice.  Knowing what kind of tax-exempt accounts exist and what the rules for them are is useful, and often non-trivial to fully grasp and plan for.  Also, the investment advisers I've talked to seemed to be pretty knowledgeable about that sort of thing, whereas their understanding of investment concepts like risk/reward tradeoffs, statistics, and portfolio optimization is generally weak.
frankly, it's got very good advice.  It teaches you how to look at your purchases of assets and determine which are truly investments (2nd home rented out) vs those that are not (the ones you live in, don't count on appreciation).  Gives you a very simple but very clear method of accounting your expenses for becoming financially independent.  Things that are simple and you probably know but he puts it in a way that allows you to focus on it more clearly.  However, it is not a get rich quick scheme.  It doesn't tell you which gimmicks to become rich, just how to manage your investments clearly.  His later books are all a money grab and you can see him start to drift to the dark side of greed.
"I would personally beware of the Motley Fool. Their success is based largely on their original investment strategy book. It had a lot of good advice in it, but it pushed a strategy called ""The Foolish Four"" which was an investing strategy. Since it was based on a buy-and-hold method with 18-month evaluation intervals, it was not a get-rich-quick scheme. However, its methods were validated through data mining and subsequently turned out to be not so good. At least they admit this: http://www.fool.com/ddow/2000/ddow001214.htm"
check out this rebuttal to the TechCrunch article from Leigh Drogen: http://www.leighdrogen.com/wealthfront-betterment-sigfig-and-a-bankrupt-investing-philosophy/  It's not so much the software piece he takes aim at but what he calls a broken philosophy. Saving money off fees and automating the investing process to prevent behavioral biases is all good but it's not a solution.
it's kind of like a circular loop:  i think he would suggest identifying strategies/portfolio managers who have demonstrated outperformance in a persistent manner.  Thing is, that's also really hard to do.  I think empirically, MPT suffers when the market does. By diversifying, you'll only be down less. He's suggesting shooting for absolute returns -- no matter what the market does, he wants to see positive gains.  (a lot) easier said than done
Kiyosaki says his methods of actions are not suitable for the average investor. They are meant for those wanting to excel at investing, and are willing to work for it. Personally, I wouldn't want to own ten apartments, because it sounds like a terrible headache. I would much rather have a huge portfolio of index funds. I believe that Kiyosaki's method allegedly perform better than the passive 'invest-diversify-hold' strategy, but would require a new mindset and dedication, and are risky unless you are willing to invest a lot of time learning the fine details. I prefer to dedicate my time elsewhere.
Does what I'm planning have similarities with some financial concept or product (to allow me to research better by looking at the risks of that concept/product)? Maybe like a mortgage investment plan without the bank eating your money in between? I'm not sure what you mean by ""what you're planning"". The main financial products relevant to what you're describing are index funds (which you already mentioned) and index ETFs (which are basically similar with regard to the questions you're asking here). As far as concepts, the philosophy of buying low-fee index funds, holding them for a long time, and not selling during crashes, is essentially that espoused by Jack Bogle (not quite the inventor of the index fund, but more or less its spiritual father) and the community of ""Bogleheads"" that has formed around his ideas. There is a Bogleheads wiki with lots of information about the details of this approach to investing. If this strategy appeals to you, you may find it useful to read through some of the pages on that site."
Looking through his post history, it seems all he does is hit up Internet strangers for advice on his business. I don't see it there, but I vaguely remember a post he had on either here or r/personalfinance that didn't go his way.   On topic: if it were me, I'd want no less than 60% of the company. If I'm fronting 100%, it's *my* risk, while you have zero.
One can never be too cautious when when choosing a financial adviser. For example, has the company your adviser claims to represent ever been sanctioned by the local financial authorities? Does your adviser reside in the country in which he purports to operate? Have you thoroughly researched his background?  It is also important to bear in mind what venues a company uses for advertising - if the company resorts to advertising by spamming, then their overall business practices are likely unethical and this could lead to trouble down the line.  Finally, one should also research how the company's clientele has been built up. Was it through word of mouth or was the client data acquired by other means?
Who is going to invest without being a gatekeeper? You don't invest in stuff you don't think is good ... as an investor, you will select who you invest in. You don't invest and sit back and not provide any input on what you think the artist should do to sell themselves so that you make your money back.
I believe he was recommended by one of the investors. After digging a little deeper, it seems the person who invested the most (I believe they own 40%) has his wife doing the taxes and paperwork. We've tried to get them to show us the paperwork and they always seem reluctant. They claim that they're not getting anything either, but they're more of a mutual partner that was introduced to us by the third investor. Basically I invested with a friend, who introduced a third investor (who bought in at the majority). I think it was my friend who knew this manager and hired him due to a past relationship they had. For more insight, my friend actually owns another 2 bars that are quite successful, but it seems he's completely not invested in this one despite owning 30%.
"Since I, personally, agree with the investment thesis of Peter Schiff, I would take that sum and put it with him in a managed account, and leave it there. I'm not sure how to find a firm that you like the investment strategy of.  I think that it's too complicated to do as a side thing.  Someone needs to be spending a lot of time researching various instruments and figuring out what is undervalued or what is exposed to changing market trends or whatever. I basically just want to give my money to someone and say ""I agree with your investment philosophy, let me pay you to manage my money, too."" No one knows who is right, of course.  I think Schiff is right, so that's where I would put the amount of money you're talking about.  If you disagree with his investment philosophy, this doesn't really make any sense to do. For that amount of money, though, I think firms would be willing to sit down with you and sell you their services.  You could ask them how they would diversify this money given the goals that you have for it, and pick one that you agree with the most."
You don't even know why licenses you need? And you're asking Reddit? You will be doing a disservice to any client who has the misfortune of having you as an investment advisor. Go work for an established shop for a bit and learn the ropes. How could you dream of asking someone to trust you with their money when you know as little as you do?
The best analysis I know of Kiyosaki and his advice somes from a genuine property expert who gives plenty of good advice.  If you are really interested then check out [John T Reed on Robert T Kiyosaki](http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html).
To be fair, if you actually read what he says (the headlines are not from him), he NEVER picks a date. He is one of the most successful investors of all time, and has very solid input on general market trends. I've personally utilized his advice to great success in the past, and if you actually look at what he says, it's sound financial advice.  In this particular case, he IS calling a market crash by end of this year or next. I would heed his advice.
If you see something that looks like a sales pitch, be skeptical, even if they sound informed, say things which resonate with your concerns and promise to alleviate your problems. Watch out in particular for people who pontificate about matters which are tangentially related to the investment (e.g. populist anti-Wall-Street sentiment). Beware limited-time opportunities, offers, and discounts. I'm specifically talking about your email pitches, Motley Fool. They're shameful. Remember you're allowed to change your mind and go back on something that you've said a few minutes ago. If anyone tries to trick you into agreeing to go along with them by taking what something you've said and manipulating it, or uses logic to demonstrate that you must buy something based on things you've said, tell them you're not comfortable, head for the door and don't look back. Don't be afraid of embarrassment or anything like that. (You can investigate whether your position is in fact logically consistent later.) Run away from anyone who resents or deprecates the notion of a second opinion. Don't ever go along with anything that seems shady: it may be shadier than you know. Some people thought Bernie Maddoff was doing some front-running on the side; turns out it was a Ponzi scheme. (Likewise the Ponzi scheme that devastated Albania's economy was widely suspected of being dirty, but people suspected more of a black-market angle.) Beware of anyone who is promising stability and protection. Insurance companies can sell you products (especially annuities) which can deliver it, but they're very expensive for what you get. Don't buy it unless you seriously need it.
It depends on the relationship you have with the person.  Let's say you're referring your client to him. What if he fails to provide the promised IT consultation service? It would bring in bad reputation to your business as well, right? First of all, you should keenly look into his portfolio and the reputation he has been holding in his work field. If he's a good profile that matches with your clients' project, I have no objection for partnering up with him.  Being the co-founder of a digital marketing agency, I have partnered up with the fellow agencies and it worked well in between both parties.  If you have more questions, feel free to ask.
In the intro to the Big Short, the author talks about how he wrote liars poter to steer people away from wall street, but in the end it became a manual for how to work there.  I am not trying to steer you away, or towards anything except the facts. If you want to do well in something, the best idea is to understand it; warts and all.
The nature of this question (finding a financial adviser) can make it a conundrum. Those who have little financial experience are often in the greatest need of a financial adviser and at the same time are the least qualified to select one. I'm not putting you or anyone in particular in this category. And of course it's a sliding scale: In general the more capable you are of running your own finances the more prepared you are to answer this question. With that said, I would recommend backing up half a step. Consider advisers other than strictly fee-only advisers. Perhaps you have already considered this decision. But perhaps others reading this have not. My (Ameriprise) adviser charges a monthly (~$50) fee, but also gets percentage-based portions of certain investments. Based on a $150/hr rate that amounts to four hours per year. Does he spend four hours per year on my account? Well so far he does (~2 yrs). But that is determined primarily by how much interaction I choose to have with him. (I suppose I could spend more time asking him questions and less time on this forum. :P) I have never fully understood the gravitation towards fee-based advisers on principle. I guess the theory is they are not making biased decisions about your investments because they don't have as much of a stake in how well your investments to do. I don't necessarily see that as an advantage. It seems they would have less of an incentive to ensure the growth of your investments. Although if you're nearing retirement then growth isn't your biggest concern. Perhaps a fee-based adviser makes more sense in that scenario. Whatever pay structure your adviser uses, it would seem to make sense to consider a successful adviser with a good client base. This implies that the adviser knows what he/she is doing. (But it could also just be a sign that they are good at marketing themselves.) If your adviser has a good base of wealthy clients then choosing a strictly-fee based adviser would mitigate the risk of your adviser having less incentive to consider your portfolio vs that of more wealthy clients. To more directly answer your question I suggest asking several of your adviser candidates for advice on choosing an adviser. I suspect you will get some good advice as well as good insight on the integrity and honesty of the adviser.
Now, keep in mind I'm biased because I'm an engineer at this company, but FutureAdvisor.com provides advice on your savings and investments.  We currently help users optimize their portfolios for retirement savings, but plan on rolling our more savings goals in the future.
Tim Ferris has some pretty good finance related episodes with hedge fund managers or personal finance authors (for e.g. the one with Ray Dalio or Tony Robbins).  They are not exclusively finance related but include some pretty in-depth conversations.  20-Minute VC is also great if you're interested in Venture Capital.
"What you are looking for is a Money Coach or a Personal Finance Coach. From mymoneycoach.com: ""Money Coach: Everyone uses money, but few people fully understand how to use it wisely. To be debt free and enjoy a comfortable lifestyle takes special skills. Money coaches provide solutions for household budgeting, investing, using credit wisely, and saving for retirement. With the principles offered by a money coach, you can live the life you want to live."" Usually money coaches or personal finance coaches will not tell you ""you should put your money here or there"" but instead they will work with you to identify and correct bad money behaviours that affect more than just your investments, and they will not sell you anything. Maybe you could take a look at some coaches in your area, but a lot of them work via the internet too. Good luck!"
&gt;If you're a non-target like me this is how it is. With hard work and intelligence we will get what we want though. I suggest looking into the CFA program.  I think networking might be more effective on that front.  I'm from a non-target (and not even in finance) yet it seems like talking to people has gotten me a lot further than anything else.  I've been surprised at the number of bankers who are willing to give me the time of day.