Insights

See today's post on my Cornerstone Investment Services FB Page

Ever posted a picture of yourself online? Chances are your face is now in the files of Clearview Facial Recognition, a  company that has software that allows police to track down criminals. That's a good thing, but it is built using a database of many millions of...

The Dept of Labor, which oversees retirement plans, publishes a brochure entitled Meeting Your Fiduciary Responsibilities, i.e. those that come along with oversight of a retirement plan. While the DOL has published a lot and there is a lot to keep up with, this is a...

More facts from a WSJ article on student debt. The average student loan balance for a graduate with a degree in Dance from New York University is $96,000. About 30% of student loans are in income-based repayment plans with another 20% in forbearance and another 10%...

Bitcoin was an experiment that didn't quite work, mainly because the value fluctuated so that no one knew quite what they were really getting paid. But Facebook's recently announced Libra may have solved that problem with tying it to a basket of popular international...

Advisers working for registered investment advisory firms like mine have long been held to a higher standard of care for clients than those that work for brokerage firms, banks and insurance companies and are paid by commissions. I am proud of the higher standard and...

I am going to start posting a series of short articles by other writers whom I follow that I think would be beneficial to my readers. The first of these is from Fred Reish, an ERISA attorney with Drinker Biddle who is a frequent speaker at retirement plan conferences....

The DOL Fiduciary Rule that was so controversial was in its intention very good. There is no excuse for anyone in the financial services industry to put their interests above their own. The problems were in the paperwork it required and that it was not coordinated...

Any employer offering a qualified retirement plan like a 401(k) has a duty to monitor the plan, including the plan fees and the performance of the funds in the plan lineup. That does not mean that those who oversee the plan can be sued for underperformance as such....

Party Over? I sold some stock positions the other day in many accounts for individual clients, positions that were declining more rapidly than the benchmark S&P 500 Index, which is now down over 8% over the last month and has lost all its gains for the year. This...