Avion Wealth

  It's been an interesting week. We've got the Kansas City Chiefs winning the Super Bowl. I don't know what to say about the debacle in Iowa, but really what's on everyone's mind is how will a Coronavirus affect stock markets and your investment portfolio? Now there are precedents, so we can talk about this. The SARS virus, there's Avian Flu and there's Ebola. What are the threats? Why would markets be so upset? Well, the biggest threat we're concerned about is these travel bans - especially in China. One of the things that's been learned with Ebola in Africa is the stricter the travel ban, the harder people will work to actually violate it. The other threat is what does it do to economic consumption and global GDP markets? We do know from history that travel bans rarely work.   We also know from history that this type of...

  January means tax time is just around the corner. Here's a couple of pointers that may help mitigate the cost and difficulty of preparing your taxes this year. We've got a lot of different clients with a lot of different desires when it comes to how best to file their taxes. Some clients, every single document, as soon as they get it, they send it to their CPA. Something to keep in mind is when the CPA opens up that envelope, it's going to hack the clock and probably most CPAs have a minimum of 15 minutes, so you can start seeing where we're going here. Bundle the documents. You may send one bundle late January, another bundle late February, and another bundle late March. But bundle the documents because the less envelopes that CPA opens, the less it's going cost you.   The second challenge we have is...

It's the end of 2019. Efficient Wealth Management is really proud to announce that we have reached our $100,000 commitment. That's $100,000 of giving to local and other needy causes. For 2020, we want a new commitment, a great new goal to celebrate the new name, Avion Wealth, and the new look. At Avion Wealth in 2020, we've decided our giving commitment is going to be bumped to $202,000. We'd like to celebrate the new year with a new commitment - the $202,000 commitment. We wish you a fantastic new year in 2020. Of course, we always wish you the best of investing success.

What is negative duration when talking about bonds, and why can that be a good thing? In a fantastic year of rallying asset classes, there's always going to be a negative standout. In 2019, International Bonds was that negative standout. We must remember that though hindsight is 20/20, foresight is not. The challenge when dealing with the problem is that typically last year's laggard holding is next year's top performer, or close to it. You step off the tracks and you run the risk of getting mowed down by a train coming in the other direction. Before we get into the perfect storm that was 2019, let's talk about negative duration briefly. Many of you know from previous videos that duration is inversely related to interest rates. That means in English, when interest rates go up X percent, the value of the bond falls Y percent and vice versa. Interest...

We’re really excited to share with you today a preview of the new look for our firm in 2020. This will be the last video in which we refer to ourselves as Efficient Wealth Management. You see, the company's ready for a facelift - something to match the quality and class of our world-class client experience. We’re looking forward to the future, and wish you the best of investment success!

The holidays are here. Christmas 2019 is just around the corner and I am so excited about an announcement we'll be making at the end of the week. Hi, my name is Paul Carroll. I'm the CEO and founder of Efficient Wealth Management, a boutique wealth management firm here in South Texas. It's been a fantastic year for equities, and in fact, even bonds have fared fairly well thanks to falling interest rates. We have got major changes in store here at Efficient Wealth Management. We want to be even better for our clients in 2020, and so we're looking forward to an announcement that befits the world-class team, technology and experience we have for our clients. We wish you the best of investment success, and we'll talk to you soon.

It's that time again: it's almost Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving means Christmas shopping. Our experience has been once the Christmas shopping has started, any chance of getting the spending under control is over. I want to briefly go over seven tips to help you prepare financially for the holidays. First, try to take a look at what you spent last year. Were you happy with what you spent? If you were, then do what you did last year, that's simple. If not, number two, start making a budget and gift list now. Shopping is an arms race. Once you've bought something for Uncle Fred, you have to spend at least as much for Aunt Mildred or whoever the relatives are, so we need to get this under control right now. Figure out gifts, decorations, foods, activities, donations. Three, set aside the money. Set the expectations early, work from the end game...

So right now, this week we're seeing a bit of a global stock rout. In fact this week the S&P 500's down 2% and with Brexit approaching that British FTSE 100 is down 3%. So what's going on? And what can we do about it? Brexit's approaching October 31st and that doesn't look like there's any kind of a plan for that event. In the United States, we're seeing a slowing job growth, we're seeing manufacturing weakness, and we're seeing the service sector slowing also. West Texas Intermediate, is now $52 a barrel. The 10-year T-bill yield is below 1.6%. Who would have thought you'd see a 10-year bond yielding less than 1.6%? It does look like bonds have priced in the risks that exist in the world today a little bit ahead of equities, and there is a lot of global geopolitical uncertainty. In the first nine months of...

Yesterday, Wednesday, August the 14th, the market dropped 3%. We know that hurt, but how did a diversified portfolio fare? Yes, the Dow dropped 3%. Fortunately, if you're diversified, you discovered that international equities dropped far less, and fixed income bonds - that asset class that everybody loves to hate today - they did well. Interest rates fell. It was one of the triggers for the market. When interest rates fall, bonds do well. Now, it's very instructive to look at history when we look at these events. In 2018, five-year global bonds were the best performing asset class. In fact, all equities were in negative territory, and international equities were definitely leading the pack in the downside. The firm Dimensional Fund Advisors has a wonderful matrix book that discusses the randomness of returns in different asset classes. We've attached the chart to this video. What it does is, it...

Hindsight bias, remembering facts as if we knew them in advance. It's what causes us to make big investment mistakes. People like to believe that they saw the last six months' fantastic rally coming, and yet interestingly, their behavior suggests that they didn't. Consequently, they believe that their insights looking forward are valid when in reality they're not. I call this a self-induced bear trap. As social animals, we squirm when not following our herd. The herd right now is chasing a late-stage bull rally. Some are even questioning having anything but a hundred percent equities in their portfolio. This is not a call to action. If you have an appropriate asset allocation then you're currently enjoying nice returns, while positioned to weather the inevitable storm. Hold the line. Resist your reptile brain's instinct to follow the herd over a financial cliff like a lemming. Try this experiment. Close your...