Two common questions investors ask themselves at the beginning of any year are: What is the stock market going to do this year? And, how should I position my portfolio as a result? To provide some insight as to what may be in store for the year, we’ve taken a look at what seven of the biggest financial institutions in the world are predicting for 2014. As you read through these, it’s important to keep in mind that your portfolio’s allocation should be based on more than just a forecast—you also need to consider your long-term goals, cash flow needs, risk tolerance, and other factors related to your investment plan. How Will the S&P 500 Perform in 2014? Morgan Stanley - S&P 500 +9%1 Morgan Stanley equity strategist Dr. Adam S. Parker thinks the S&P 500 is set to rise 9% in 2014. Morgan Stanley’s strategy recommendations are to favor small cap stocks versus large cap, and at a sector level they prefer health care to consumer staples, technology to consumer discretionary, and chemicals to industrials and energy. Within financials, they like capital-market-sensitive banks and asset managers over insurers and regional banks. [+] Read More

April 15 is fast approaching and the W-2s, 1099s, and other tax documents are starting to appear in your mailbox - it’s almost time to file. What’s more, with Congress having passed some tax law changes in 2013 - higher top marginal income tax rate (39.6%), higher capital gains rate (20%) for top earners, etc1… - there’s a possibility that your tax bill has increased from 2012. With that in mind, it could make sense to start preparing your taxes early in the event you might owe a bit more than you think. This way you’ll have additional time to decide how you want to pay. We hope the information below will help make the tax preparation experience a little better by reminding investors of a few ways they may be able to reduce their taxable income for 2013, while also offering a few pointers for thoughtful tax planning in 2014. Ways to Potentially Reduce Taxable Income for 2013 It’s too late to make tax deductible contributions to 401(k) plans or other employer-sponsored plans for the 2013 tax year. But, you might still have some alternatives—if you meet some eligibility requirements, you could potentially make a tax deductible contribution to a Traditional IRA, a SEP IRA, or a Health Savings Account, which would reduce the taxable income that you would report for the year. [+] Read More

Creating an estate plan involves a lot of thought and time, and in some cases may cost a bit of money. But don’t let that discourage you from establishing a comprehensive estate plan as part of your overall investment approach. The time and effort spent creating an estate plan can often mean less time and stress for your family down the road. To help you get started, we’ve outlined six estate planning tips we think are important to any estate plan. A good idea would be to go through a few of these steps on your own to accomplish the basics of estate planning, then loop in your financial advisor and/or estate planner to help you solidify it with the necessary investment accounts and legal documents. 1) List the Valuable Assets in Your Estate Generally, you want to run an inventory of all of your assets that have value greater than $100 or so. Of course you want to include your home, investment accounts, bank accounts, insurance policies and so forth, but you also want to get granular with your assets and include things like jewelry, collectibles, electronic equipment, etc… You can then go through this list and decide how you want these assets distributed as part of your estate plan.1 [+] Read More

For investors who are at or near retirement, we believe two fundamental questions should almost always be asked: “do you have enough money to support your needs for spending in retirement, and, will your family be taken care of if you pass away?” In a previous post, we wrote about how to check to make sure you have saved enough to meet your retirement income needs. Now the question turns to, “do you have enough saved to support your spouse and family as well? Start with an Estate Planning Checklist An estate planning checklist can help you get organized and have a clearer picture of how prepared you are for retirement. Running through an estate planning checklist encourages you to inventory your assets and debts, update your beneficiaries to make sure the assets go to the right places, and formalize everything through legal documentation. Once you’ve done that, you can get to answering the question posed in this piece: “is your nest egg big enough to support your family?” Investors should address this in two parts: [+] Read More

With their first investment commentary of 2014, money manager Calamos Investments remains cautiously optimistic for the global economy and believes the U.S. is in a secular bull market. From the commentary: "Entering 2014, we expect a good year for global equity and convertible markets overall. The major global economies look positioned to show faster growth, although this positive global synchronization is occurring at varying rates and supported by diverging policies. Historically, the conditions we see today have benefited equities and convertibles, especially cyclical growth opportunities. More importantly, we are encouraged by the emergence of more fundamentally driven markets across asset classes and believe that our active approach is well suited to this environment." Download the Full Calamos Commentary Here Get Free Research Reports on Calamos Investments [+] Read More

The stock market felt a sting last week, with the Dow dropping 3.5% and marking its worst week since November 2011. A majority of the decline took place on Friday, when the Dow fell some 320 points, or almost 2%. The S&P 500 slid 2.6% on the week, which was its largest weekly decline since May 2012, and technology stocks followed suit as well with the NASDAQ selling off 1.7% and posting its worst week since last August. The sell-off last week has naturally caused some investors to wonder, is this pullback the start of a stock market correction? Below, we’ll address that question for you and look at past stock market corrections. Corrections Are a Normal Part of Bull Markets That’s not WrapManager making that statement - history makes it for us! As you can see in the chart below, the average intra-year decline for the S&P 500 since 1980 is 14.4%. Put another way: for the last 34 years, the average drop within a given year for the S&P 500 is 14.4%. [+] Read More

If you were to ask us to answer that question in short, here’s what we would say: Remain calm, patient, and try not to make decisions based on emotion. As we've written before on stock market corrections, they can be rather unnerving, but at the same time they are a normal part of rising markets, and they’re usually short-lived. It’d be great if the market always went up in a straight line, but unfortunately it does not and there are often pullbacks along the way. So, knowing that corrections will likely occur quite a bit over time, what’s the best investment strategy for handling a stock market correction? We go back to the statement we made at the beginning of this post. Remain Calm Often times when the market starts to decline, you’ll see a lot of news headlines that invoke worry about the state of things. A top headline today on Bloomberg, for instance, read: “US Stocks Retreat Following Worst Week Since 2012.”1 That certainly doesn’t make many people feel warm and fuzzy about the market. [+] Read More

The world’s largest asset manager, Blackrock, conducted an investor survey in 2013, asking 17,600 people in 12 countries how they felt about the markets and their personal financial situations. There are a lot of data points to consider, but one in particular stood out to us: about 50% of respondents are concerned they are going to outlive their savings.1 Many of these respondents could feel concerned simply because they don’t know where they stand. An investment plan can provide a little clarity (and perhaps a wake-up call) to investors wondering if their nest egg is going to last throughout retirement. Think of an investment plan as a manual, there to help you keep track of your progress toward building a successful retirement. What Exactly is an Investment Plan? An investment plan is a comprehensive report that takes a detailed view of an investor’s assets, liabilities, current spending needs, future spending needs, investments, asset allocation, and goals, and uses all of that information to project/estimate how “on-track” an investor is to reaching their objectives. [+] Read More

International money manager Cambiar Investors' fourth quarter investment commentary reviews their outlook for the international equity markets and the performance of their International and Global equity portfolios. From the commentary: "Global equities continued their dramatic ascent into the fourth quarter, with many indices closing 2013 at their high of the year. A diminishing sense of crisis, coupled with growing evidence of improving economic activity, awakened investors’ animal spirits, and global equities were the direct beneficiary of this increased optimism." Download Cambiar Investors' Full Commentary Here Get Free Research Reports on Cambiar Investors [+] Read More