The Asset Allocator: DIY Disasters Are Avoidable

Guest podcaster Jason Kirsch, CFP(R) discusses increasing demand for speculation among his younger clients.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The huge and rapid across-the-board gains of the current market make now the most relevant time to remind investors of the protective value of asset allocation. This podcast (5:46) argues that we should reduce risk and aspire to steady returns. While we cannot predict the future — indeed, because we cannot predict the future — we should plan our finances in such a way as to avoid calamitous outcomes.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ron Surz’s new book “Baby Boomer Investing in the Perilous Decade of the 2020s” offers guidance on protecting lifetime savings that now reside in the crossfires of financial disaster. He is making the book available for free this week, through May 28, on Amazon. In this podcast (21:34), Surz explains why he believes the 2020s are a time of heightened risk, how boomers, who are most exposed, can protect themselves from this risk, and how even those who have saved insufficiently can live a dignified retirement.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Intel’s detractors criticize the company for falling behind competitors in data-center sales, for reducing buybacks and for declining profit margins. But it is when a company is down that its stock price provides an attractive entry point. This podcast (8:05) argues that Intel’s problems are fixable and that its new leadership appears to be busy fixing them now. And in the meantime, its stock sells at a modest price-to-earnings ratio of 12, a fraction of the industry average.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Veteran investment research Laurence (Larry) Siegel’s response to all the doomsday stories in the daily news is his book “Fewer, Richer, Greener,” which offers a long view of the progress and economic growth our world has known, despite the proverbial bumps on the road. This podcast (20:40) challenges Siegel with a bit of the gloom and doom that we’re seeing. The financial analyst concedes that a sober view of markets is justified, but defends the view that the broader economy is progressing. In this interview and in his book, Siegel prefers to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fed’s interventionist policies are the primary source of our current “everything rally,” and it is this same factor that will eventually upend it. This podcast (7:50) argues that discounted cash flows and other tools of fundamental analysis are compromised when the so-called risk-free rate of money has been openly distorted for so long, and why other factors are worthy of consideration. It also suggests that investors always be prepared for risk-off scenarios.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At a time when oil majors are facing increasing pressure to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, a key question for investors concerns not which future technologies will prevail but who is helping these companies get rid of their methane right now. This podcast (6:40) argues that Baker Hughes’s solutions are performing right now in an area of rising regulatory scrutiny and hence growing market importance.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ambev (ABEV) operates in a country reeling under pandemic, but Brazilians continue to drink beer, revenue is growing and investor fear of Brazil will eventually subside as a commodity boom lifts its currency. This podcast (7:28) argues that Ambev is already increasing revenue while cyclical factors should help it cut costs, fueling a renewed look by investors at an emerging-markets company with a popular product and solid customer base.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have no regrets about missing out on a stock on my watchlist that moved up 700 percent this past year, but feel more regret for a value stock I failed to snatch before it moved up 25 percent. This podcast (6:21) argues that past experience, which in my case has shown that the market ultimately recognizes value, encourages me to hold cash while searching for value stocks with long runways, enabling me to enjoy the tranquility of a portfolio requiring just mild supervision.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The contemporary prophet Harry Dent Jr. says the stock market will collapse this month. The financial newsletter writer even added that he will quit his job if he is wrong. This podcast (6:21) warns that even the most brilliant economic sages – like the great American economist Irving Fisher – falter when they make predictions, because their vast knowledge does not endow them with this ability. Hoping to cure investors of their innate credulity, I summon the story of the Witch of Endor, which memorably illustrates the fraudulence of acts of divination.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices