AWM Insights Financial and Investment News

The most important question when it comes to investing is the why? You cannot give good financial advice or make good investing decisions on your own without understanding what success looks like to you.    Most financial advisors miss the most important question to ask their clients because they have too many clients to spend the necessary amount of time getting to know. They then invest them int...

In the previous two episodes of AWM Insights, we covered when the best time to invest your money is and where to look for your investment advice. This week we continue by discussing how you should construct a portfolio to achieve the returns you deserve.   Every investor deserves a portfolio tailored to the priorities they want to achieve. Very few are able to get that advice because they are stuc...

Whenever you have the money, it is the best time to invest. The caveat is that you must have a customized, well thought out plan that you can stick with over the long term. The market will always give you an excuse to wait. The problem is that waiting has proven to cost investors sitting on the sidelines huge amounts every year.     Markets are rallying this week on an agreement to raise the debt...

There are millions of places to find mainstream investment advice across television, books, social media, newspapers, newsletters, and friends. The problem is that this advice is almost always inappropriate for you - and often objectively wrong or misinformed.  The best in the world seek only customized financial advice specific to their own situation and free from conflicts that plague Wall Stree...

Last week had the largest market down day of 2021, yet the markets finished slightly up on the week. What can and should you expect from the market? Markets moving up and down is normal and should be expected. As an investor, you will live through many rough market days. You will experience many fear and greed cycles.  The key to weathering these storms is creating an investment game plan and stic...

With recent market dips, a common question that arises is: what causes market volatility? The answer is a complex set of circumstances determined by many market decisions, but the real question lies in what you as an investor should do in times of market volatility. Many headlines will prod a doom and fearful response, but what does the evidence show? In this week’s episode, Brandon and Justin dis...

Is picking individual stocks a good investment strategy?  Yes, if you like not being compensated for a lot of risk…No, if you want to have an actual investment strategy.  While a case could be made for individual stock selection 50 years ago, in today’s information age, any edge investors may have had decades ago has been eliminated.  In this episode, Erik, Justin, and Brandon highlight the fallac...

Following our deep dive into risk on last week’s episode, we received a listener question asking if risk and return are always perfectly related. Absolutely not. Simply taking on more risk doesn’t lead to more success. There are different types of risks that are important to understand before introducing added risk into your portfolio. Erik and Justin continue the conversation this week to explain...

Risk might be the most used word in finance. We hear it all the time, but many have no idea how to define or quantify it.  The reality is that “risk” is an umbrella term with different types of risk folded underneath it. Though many will define risk in terms of tolerance, looking at it this way can stifle your long-term growth opportunities. Instead, it can be better to view risk as the permanent...

Everyday, thousands of investors tune into their favorite business news channels and hear pundits discuss trends in the markets. They see flashy tickers at the bottom of their screen and listen to famous people in finance give their outlook on what the future holds.  While dramatic and entertaining, most of what they listen to is erroneous. Our favorite business news channels are in business to ma...

You see it all over the news and social media: wealthy people talking about how they generate monthly income without ever having to work. Purchase a home or rental property, then open your mailbox every month and collect a check. Rinse and repeat. Do you really need to become a real estate tycoon to build wealth? Is it really that easy? Of course not.  In this episode, Erik, Justin, and Brandon hi...

In your investment portfolio, you have the choice of making the amateur move – listening to the mainstream financial pundits who want you to feel FOMO over the latest stock picking craze – or the pro move of looking at how the best in the world do what they do, which is also backed by decades of research. We started this series a few weeks ago by focusing on overall financial structure and followe...

One of the most important aspects of reaching your financial priorities over the long term is portfolio construction.  Just as important as putting the right players in the right positions on the field is the importance of understanding and utilizing the full toolbox for building your customized portfolio that takes into account all the complexities of your specific situation.  In this week’s epis...

We believe that the greatest driver of your net worth is your human capital. But what about when you reach the phase in your life when you’ve converted all or the majority of your human capital into resources? What are some of the considerations you should be making in relation to your overall financial structure? This week, Brandon and Justin discuss what to do when you’ve realized all of your hu...

With the all-time market highs that we’re seeing despite fears of inflation, we’re also continuing to see the popularity of real estate investing and venture capital private equity. But whether you just dip your toe in or dive in headfirst to these kinds of investments – are you getting the returns you deserve?  When investing in these spaces, they require more patient capital that can’t be pulled...

In the past year, we’ve seen a boom in entrepreneurship – with more businesses being created in 2020 than any other year in history, companies going public, and as of July 1st, the Mets paid Bobby Bonilla another $1M and we saw that now NCAA athletes are able to make money off their name, image, and likeness. What do all of these have in common? They all tie back to the greatest driver of your wea...

With markets continuing their unpredictable ebbs and flows, one important piece of news emerged in a ProPublica article that reported Paypal founder Peter Thiel turned $2,000 in his Roth IRA in 1999 to now more than $5 billion. Its stories like this that highlight the fundamental importance of financial structure.  We mention financial structure ad nauseum here at AWM, but what exactly do we mean...

This week we’re tackling the topic of the Federal Reserve, Inflation, and why these are important to you as an investor. It seems like this topic has come up out of nowhere in the last couple months, and we’re actually now seeing the markets react. After the Federal Reserve signaled that the central bank could start to raise interest rates to try and tame inflation earlier than they had originally...

The most recent Consumer Price Index (CPI) report shows a continued rise in inflation – the fastest pace of higher prices since 2008. So, while it’s safe to say we’re seeing some inflation as the economy continues to recover from the impacts of COVID, the big question to ask is if inflation is here to stay? In this week’s episode, AWM’s managing partner, Brandon Averill, and CIO, Justin Dyer discu...

Recent reports have shown jobless claims falling to new pandemic lows and wages growing, but there are also some indicators that prices might be ticking up as well – potential signs of inflation. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 4.2% from a year ago, which is the fastest rise since September 2008. With the updated report being released later this week, many investors are watching to see how...

Real estate markets around the country are booming – home values are skyrocketing, demand is high, inventory in many places is low, and many are wondering if they should be getting in to real estate investing. We’re frequently asked about this form of investing from our clients, and many wonder if this is a “safer” form of long-term investing than the stock market. In a recent Gallup poll, the maj...

There’s been plenty of conversations online, in the media, and in locker rooms about which stocks to buy and why crypto is a sure bet, but how do you sift through the FOMO and educate yourself enough to form your own wealth plan? One of the most asked questions our team gets is how to actually go about getting educated on investing – how to set learning goals, available resources to tap into, and...

Last week, three main stories sent shockwaves through the markets stoking anxiety for investors going forward.  Elon Musk shocked the crypto world announcing Tesla would not accept Bitcoin for the purchase of their vehicles.  Colonial Pipeline — operator of the nation's largest fuel pipeline network experienced a cyber-attack that sharply drove up the cost of gas nationwide. U.S. consumer prices j...

At times investing can seem like a black box. And today, it may feel like you are the only missing out on astronomical returns.  Yet, nothing lasts forever.  It is important to remind yourself for every Crypto speculator who hit the lottery, there are thousands of other tickets that never hit.  The good news is that you can don’t need to bet on the lottery for financial success. You simply need to...

Investment returns continue to soar higher across the world in both the public and private markets. Should your future investments go into what has been doing the best recently? While this seems like a prudent approach, the famous disclosure, “Past performance does not guarantee future results” that is plastered everywhere offers a strong warning.  Listen in as we answer how the current performanc...