“The Federal Reserve, Fears about the Market, and Financial Planning in 2019”: Jonathan M Satovsky discusses the Federal Reserve’s upcoming December meeting and what it could mean for the markets, fears around recent volatility, and the important financial planning habits going into 2019.
“Thanksgiving Day Gratitude / Investment Advice”: Jonathan discusses investing in the Markets vs. Cash – maintaining a long term investment perspective. Metrics on business / stock ownership vs. cash.
Jonathan M. Satovsky, CFP, ChFC, CIMA, CPWA
Satovsky Asset Management, LLC (SAM)
232 Madison Avenue, Suite 400
New York, NY 10016
Phone: 212.584.1900
“Halloween Hysteria: The Market’s Trick is Your Treat!”: Jonathan M Satovsky discusses recent investor sentiment in the markets, reframes it in context of historical intra-year market movement, and shows that the hysteria of short-term events acts a positive for long-term investors.
“Lehman, the Lottery, and the Long View”: Jonathan M Satovsky discusses markets 10 years after the Lehman Brothers collapse, describes how consumers’ lottery habits hurt them, and explains his emphasis on the long view when setting investing goals.
“Fear & Eating Your Own Cooking”: Jonathan M Satovsky discusses the importance of developing good savings habits, the distractions caused by feeding into the frenzy of daily headlines, and sustainability options for Satovsky portfolios.
Good afternoon! This is Jonathan Satovsky of Satovsky Asset Management on June 19th 2018 with a video blog update. And today I wanted to talk about habits, headlines and heat. So habits. Daily habits, daily routines whether it’s exercising, eating well, investing, savings, these are things that need to be done in a disciplined way over a long period of time in order to see an inure the benefits. And in investing the reason we invest is because the cost of things continues to rise over time. This is an example of milk but as a Michigan alumni I just booked tickets for a Michigan football weekend and sure enough the flights were 50% more expensive than they were last year. So we have to continue to invest for the future. That’s a habit that’s very important. Another habit is trying to reverse-engineer people’s finances. And when I think about reverse engineering people’s finances I want to enable people to totally chill to be able to enjoy their summer all year round as if they’re living in the summer months. In order to do that the goal is to get to enough financial assets to support someone spending at a two to three percent spend rate. This is the the dream scenario. Now why is this a dream scenario? Here’s a visual example of retiree and view this as if you can weather a material decline in financial markets. Stay on your path, stay in your lanes, and you can weather that and be able to sustain yourself throughout the course of your lifetime. If your spending rate is above 4 percent, 5, 6, 7, 8% the probability of your success diminishes materially. And here’s just another graph that we had constructed internally to show you that the higher your spend rate the more you’re forced to take a lot of risk to give yourself even a chance of sustainability. But if you’re spend rate is extraordinarily low, you really don’t need to take much risk at all, you can maintain a moderate posture and be able to ignore the headlines. And why is it important to get to a point to ignore the headlines? Now everyone isn’t at that asset level they could support two three percent so they feel like the headlines really matter and they’re living on edge. Well the reason they’re living on edge is because they’re spending more than the assets they have. But there’s headlines every day. This the last ten years that gives you a visual depiction of a lot of headlines of reasons to sell and not invest and worry about the future. But that doesn’t really serve anyone very well. I mean certainly you can see the last 12 months there’s been plenty of negative headlines and you know progress does continue. That’s why they call it a risk premium, people earn more money by taking risk. And lastly in terms of the heat, it’s close to, feels like close to a hundred degrees in New York today walking outside. So I don’t know whether you believe in global warming or not. It feels pretty hot to me and it’s sort of oppressive to be outside. So we’ve been introducing some investments leaning on the cheap, small cheap and profitable side of the equation in terms of someone’s investment portfolio. And by just cutting out the small amount of the companies in the Russell 3000 we can actually eliminate 99 percent of potential emissions from reserves. So that’s a very powerful thing and something that at least I’m doing, trying to do my part for the summer months to reduce the heat and give people the ability to chill and with that enjoy your fourth of July holidays and your summer months. Good habits, ignore the headlines and stay out of the heat.
“Travel, Emerging Markets, and Breaking Through the Noise”: Jonathan M Satovsky discusses recent global market performance, demographic trends in emerging markets, and the ability to break free from daily headlines to focus on the long-term.
Good afternoon! This is Jonathan Satovsky of Satovsky Asset Management, July 2018 with a video blog update. And today I want to talk about travel. With the summer months many people are able to travel and see the world. I was fortunate to see Africa in this past month and was blown away just a phenomenal experience. And at the same time I happen to stumble into a book that I recommend called Factfulness by Hans Rosling, ten reasons we’re wrong about the world and why things are better than you think. So I thought it was actually very important because again if you just turn on the headline news you would think everything is horrendous and certainly financial markets have been very volatile. You can see the second quarter the US markets were up, foreign markets were down, emerging markets were down very sharply. Global real estate was up nicely. Bonds were down in the US and up around the world. Here’s the flip-flop from the first quarter and this again is a reminder of avoiding short-term thinking. And the first quarter emerging markets were up and everything else was down except for global bonds. So short-term thinking leads to a lot of behavioral risk. So I can’t state that enough. But why things are better than you think. In the book, Hans highlights that with seven billion people on the planet we have a billion people in North and South America, a billion people in Europe, a billion people in Africa and four billion people in Asia. And in the next 20 years we’re likely to still have the same billion people because of birth death rates and immigration in the US and North and South America, a billion in Europe, two billion in Africa, doubling, and five billion in Asia, which you know it is shown growth. So the biggest growth you’re going to see is in Africa. And so I’m thinking about why it translates into the world being better than you think. In the next five years, apparently the vast majority of population is going to be connected online. So everyone is going to be plugged in and seeing the information. It might lead to a lot of short-term behavioral problems but it is leading to higher income levels. This is people living on a dollar a day, three dollars a day, eight dollars a day, thirty-two dollars a day. And clearly, with Africa being a region that more people are living on a dollar a day or less. They’re moving up the income ladder in a dramatic way which is also helping life expectancies and the birth death rates which is adding to their population growth. And as these people come on and are increasing what they’re living on per day, they’re going to be consuming goods and services around the world and therefore you would expect that things are going to be much better over a long period of time. The last thing to show you, to prove this out, is a visual of the global markets and to give you a perspective. This is a visual of the US in blue and the green is a globally balanced 60/40 portfolio. Sixty percent global stocks and 40% bonds. And you can see over the last 20 years they’ve been virtually even because markets do flip-flop. But certainly in a short period of time when you look at it you see a lot of noise, a lot of noise in a short period of time, which leads to a lot of behavioral risk. So the headlines and the day to day looking on your cell phone at stock prices or security values, leads to a lot of short-term decisions that takes away from people’s long-term health, wealth and well-being. So with that, get out, take a walk around, travel, explore and see the world through a different lens. With that have an enjoyable summer. Bye-bye.
“Markets, Mindset, and the Middle Way”: Jonathan M Satovsky discusses return attribution in the domestic financial markets, explains the middle way for investors, and adds context to recent emerging market performance.
“Travel, Emerging Markets, and Breaking Through the Noise”: Jonathan M Satovsky discusses recent global market performance, views on the long-term growth prospects in emerging markets, and the ability to break free from daily headlines to focus on long-term performance.
