Thirty for Thirty Part III

PARTNERS & POLITICIANS

Tom James
These days, advisors and executives from everywhere along the spectrum of independent advice giving assume three things: that advisor practices and their partners are run as businesses; that advisors put the clients first, and that those clients deserve regular reporting from their advisor on what products and services they’re getting in exchange for their fees or commissions; and that advisors themselves have a number of options to choose from in the business platforms from which they can provide independent advice along a spectrum from employee broker to independent contractor to hybrid to full-blown independent RIA. It hasn’t always been that way, however, and for those developments which seem like givens these days you could do worse than to thank Tom James and the firm that his father, Robert "Bob" James, co-founded and that he himself joined in 1966 fresh out of Harvard Business School (he’d graduated Harvard College in 1964).

In fact, as an advisor you can hang your hat at Raymond James in a number of different ways—as employee, independent contractor, or RIA—and as of March 2010, there were 5,300 advisors doing so in the U.S., Canada, and overseas, serving 1.9 million customer accounts, and with total client assets of $233 billion. But there’s one principle that ties all those advisors together: putting the client first.

Raymond James Financial’s COO, Chet Helck, who runs the company’s Private Client Group, says "Tom has been an instrumental leader for 30-plus years," who created a platform "that results in stability and innovation," and which established "clearly defined accountability that separates people in the advice business from people in the product-selling business." One example of that innovation, Helck says: "calculating performance on every account in the firm," and the Client Bill of Rights which, among other items, promises a "trustworthy and competent financial advisor…clear communications…comprehensive statements and trade confirmations…[and] prompt error and complaint resolution." And this was first published and provided to all Raymond James clients in 1994. It still is. "Nobody else has this kind of disclosure," says Helck, who traces Tom James’s commitment to clients to "values, especially his father, a highly educated guy who started selling real estate to folks from the Midwest"—that’s why Raymond James is based on the West Coast of Florida, a traditional hotbed for Midwestern snow birds—and eventually financial advice to those same clients. "Bob James had integrity," says Helck.

James recalled in a March interview that he had to put his business skills to work immediately upon joining the company, but he didn’t rest on his laurels. He received his JD and eventually his CFP, served on the board of the SIA (now SIFMA) and on NASD boards. He became CEO in 1970, took the company public in 1983, and this month cedes that job to Paul Reilly, though James’s contribution to the company—and the communities in which the company operates, which James has always stressed to his executives— will continue. Speaking of Tom James and his legacy, Helck says that when it comes to folks who work for Raymond James and advisors who choose to affiliate with the company, "true leadership causes people to want to do things right, and it attracts people who want to do the right thing," As for clients, he notes that "indifference and fear keeps people from making the right decision; one of our main skills at Raymond James is education" that can dispel fear and inspire sound decision making.—James J. Green (JG)

Dale Brown
For the last 22 years Dale Brown has been working as a professional advocate for the advisory profession, first with the IAFP, then the FPA, and since 2003 as president and CEO of the Financial Services Institute. Brown observes that Americans have come to realize they need help to accomplish their financial goals. "Obviously I’m biased," he admits, "but I think the independent advisor who has partnered with an independent broker/dealer is in the best position to be that advisor of choice." In the seven years since its creation, Brown says FSI has achieved recognition and credibility. "Now the challenge is leveraging that credibility into real and meaningful influence on the issues that are important to our members’ business."—RFK

Joe Deitch
"One of my greatest strengths is my knowledge of how limited I am," says Joe Deitch without a hint of discomfort. "So I’ve surrounded myself with talented people who speak their mind and their views. If we make few mistakes, it’s because we hammer it out; we’ll debate until we arrive at a clear consensus," says the chairman of Commonwealth Financial. While he touts the long tenure and contributions of Peter Wheeler and his partners at Commonwealth who help him vet company strategy, Deitch is clearly the heart and soul of this independent broker/dealer which has made its mark by being "enormously clear about quality and community." That quality starts with the back office, where he notes that "we’re all incented in the same way; every single person in the home office has stock options; advisor satisfaction is a massive part of our bonus plan." Commonwealth’s vaunted practice management and wealth management competencies are nearly universally recognized, but he’s quick to cite now-President Wayne Bloom for "building the money management division." Then in 1989 Commonwealth started its practice management operations, run at first by Deitch’s late wife, a psychologist. "It was all about, at first, how do you build a team? Then I hired Joni Youngwirth." As for community, Deitch notes that "close to 60% of our home office staff is related" by blood or friendship, and that in interviewing for both new reps and staff, "we’re very vigorous, because we’re letting them into our house."—JG

Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan’s monetary policies during his 19 years as head of the Federal Reserve influenced the growth of the American economy and the long bull market, for which advisors and their clients are grateful. But did it also contribute to the financial meltdown? In testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on April 8, Greenspan said that "It was the global proliferation of securitized U.S. subprime mortgages that was the immediate trigger" of the crisis." While he acknowledged that he had made mistakes while at the Fed, he did not believe that his historically low short-term interest rates between 2001 and 2004 was one of them. Greenspan said that going forward there should be rules that "would kick in automatically, without relying on the ability of a fallible human regulator to predict a coming crisis."—MW

Ned Johnson
Edward (Ned) Johnson has been a fixture as head of Fidelity Investments for three decades. As chairman and CEO, the 79 year-old doesn’t look to be giving up his positions anytime soon at the largest mutual fund company, which also has loomed large among advisors through its RIA custody business, its TPA business, and its National Financial clearing arm. But Fidelity does "have a stated succession plan," says Jim Lowell, editor of the Fidelity Investor, although there’s "no doubt that Ned is still at the helm and still the visionary at the firm." After Fidelity’s president, Rodger Lawson, retired on March 31, Fidelity assembled a "committee of nine" executives, which includes Johnson’s daughter Abigail, instead of appointing a new president. Lowell says this "committee" is a sign that "Fidelity is internally, at the senior-most levels, debating what leadership is going to look like and how leadership is going to be defined in the near future."—MW

Ronald Reagan
The Great Communicator influenced the profession in multiple ways. His "Morning in America" and tax cutting approach helped bring Americans out of a malaise caused by hostage taking, oil embargos, a long bear market, and high inflation. The still-young profession of financial planning had become focused on tax avoidance, specifically tax shelters using limited partnerships. In our 25th anniversary edition in 2005, however, pioneering planner Ben Coombs recalled that "Volcker and Reagan breaking the back of inflation, and changing the tax code environment" was pivotal in the changes in the profession that followed. Let’s not forget that the 401(k) debuted in 1981, and that Reagan signed an increase in the payroll tax in 1983 (proposed by a commission headed by Alan Greenspan, by the way) to fund Social Security and Medicare. Yes, a tax increase from the patron saint of tax cuts that preserved government-sponsored retirement and healthcare.—JG

Todd Robinson
"It was never our intent to be the biggest, but sometimes the best become the biggest," recalls Todd Robinson of the early days of what is now known as LPL Financial. However, notes Robinson in a telephone interview in April marking a departure from his self-imposed press silence since he and his partners sold a 60% stake in LPL to a private equity firm in 2005 in a deal then valued at $2.5 billion, "the bigger we got, the more services we could offer." There was another advantage that Robinson and his partners brought in merging Linsco with Private Ledger in 1989 and building a B/D behemoth that as of year-end 2009 could count nearly 12,000 reps, $279.4 billion in brokerage and advisory assets, and a growing custodial platform for RIAs: "I started as a broker; [partner] Jim Putnam was a broker—that gave us a better ear because we had lived in their world; some of our competitors came out of the insurance and financial planning worlds—they didn’t appreciate the value of a good back office." Robinson says that he "stepped back" from LPL because "individuals are mortal, and we’d reached a size where we needed to institutionalize the company—and that’s gone well—everything seems to be going great."—JG

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
If you’re wondering why the 32d President of the United States should be considered, allow me to present just a few of his biggest accomplishments—no, not the WPA or CCC or TVA, but the SEC, the FDIC, the FHA, GNMA, and FNMA. No, not the New Deal itself, but Social Security. It was during FDR’s presidency that the Securities Act of 1933, the Investment Company Act of 1940, and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 were passed. And it was in his failed attempt to coopt the Supreme Court by expanding its numbers that he won the legal right for the government to regulate the U.S. economy. Still unconvinced?—JG

Mary Schapiro
Since becoming SEC Chairman in early 2009, Mary Schapiro has had the enormous task of rescuing the embattled securities regulator from near collapse. After the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme and the failures on Wall Street, Schapiro has created new divisions at the Commission, instituted new rules, encouraged more collaboration among divisions, and hired people with a wider range of skills.

Schapiro told Investment Advisor in early April that the SEC continues to "push very, very hard" for a fiduciary standard for B/Ds and RIAs. "We’ve been working very hard in the House and the Senate, to mixed results honestly, to try to get that grant of authority to have a fiduciary duty across both categories of financial professionals. Until we have the legislation, it’s hard for us to get very much done" in harmonizing the rules for brokers and advisors.

Moreover, she says, the SEC’s "attention right now is focused on fighting for the legislative provision that would mandate a uniform fiduciary standard."

Schapiro says she’d also like to see the final financial services reform legislation include a self-funding mechanism for the SEC. While she says there are "a lot of great things" in the House and Senate bills, like bringing over-the-counter derivatives under regulatory scrutiny for the first time, Schapiro says gaps still need to be filled.—MW

(Read more of Melanie Waddell's interview with Mary Schapiro here.)

Marv Tuttle
Marv Tuttle’s long service as the executive director and CEO of the Financial Planning Association, and with that group’s predecessor organizations, gives him a tenure in the industry almost as long as this magazine’s. The biggest change he’s seen in that time is the attitude toward the profession from media, legislators, and regulators. Today, "consumers are feeling more and more comfortable that professional financial planning can be part of their lives...but we still have lots of work to do in making sure that access to financial planning…is afforded to a larger swath of the American public."—RFK

Thirty for Thirty Part II

ICONOCLASTS & VISIONARIES

Harry Markopolos
He’s the previously obscure man who repeatedly warned the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for nearly a decade that Bernie Madoff was a fraud. Since slamming the SEC for failing to heed his warnings about Madoff during his testimony before Congress in February 2009, Harry Markopolos has become a champion to many Main Street investors, and members of Congress as well as officials at the SEC now turn to him for advice on how to fix the embattled securities regulator.

Markopolos, who now works as a full-time financial fraud investigator, details his years of tracking Madoff and his ordeal with the SEC in a new book, No One Would Listen, (John Wiley & Sons, March 2010). When asked how the SEC is doing now, a little more than a year after his scathing testimony before Congress, Markopolos (pronounced Marco-Poloes) doesn’t mince words. The SEC has "reorganized along functional lines, but they still don’t get it," he told Investment Advisor in an April interview. "They still have lawyers in charge of all of the main functions at the SEC, and lawyers aren’t going to be able to spot any sort of financial fraud. They are not equipped for it. They’ve never sat on a trading desk, they’ve never managed money themselves, they’ve never had customers or clients. So they have the wrong people in charge."

Acknowledging that no other federal agency "has gotten religion quicker than the SEC," and that SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro has "made short strides in the right direction" by bringing industry professionals into the agency, Markopolos says that the SEC still needs to "make wholesale staff replacements" and bring in a "much larger number" of securities industry professionals. Even the SEC Commissioners—who are securities lawyers—should be replaced with industry professionals, he argues. Markopolos gives the SEC credit for "changing faster than the other financial regulators," but says the Commission is "making evolutionary steps where revolutionary steps are needed."

He admits that Ponzi schemes, which were once a "low priority" for the SEC, are now being "attacked vigorously," and that "the SEC now knows how to solve Ponzi schemes rather quickly; they know to get third-party data sources to find out if any trading has occurred."

Markopolos is also adamant that the SEC needs to implement an "entrance exam" so that it can be "an elite agency once again, instead of an also-ran, which is what it’s become." Examiners on the accounting side should be CPAs with the "equivalent of Fortune 1000 public accounting or auditing experience," he says, and their test should be tougher than the CPA exam. Examiners in the asset management division should be chartered financial analysts, and their testing should be above the "CFA body of knowledge," he continues. The same goes for lawyers. "They need testing above the bar association."

Another recommendation: The SEC must change its compensation scheme so that it’s commensurate with Wall Street salaries, Markopolos says.

Many have questioned why Markopolos didn’t contact NASD/FINRA about Madoff, since Madoff operated as a broker/dealer for most of his career, and only registered with the SEC in 2006. Markopolos says he didn’t dare reach out to NASD/FINRA because "my submission would have ended up in Bernie Madoff’s hands within minutes!" since Madoff was the former chairman of Nasdaq. FINRA, Markopolos says, "is nothing but an industry shield. It’s a self regulator… they are even more check-the-box than the SEC is; that’s hard to believe. They are even less competent than the SEC and certainly more subject to political influence than the SEC."

Looking into his crystal ball, Markopolos sees the next potential economic blow-up in corporate debt. "Is it going to get paid back?" he asks. "There’s a lot of it out there that needs to be refinanced on the corporate side…mortgage-backed securities that are going to need to get refinanced, and the question becomes, ‘Can they?’ What is the value of those properties?"—Melanie Waddell (MW)

(Read more of Melanie Waddell's interview with Harry Markopolos here.)

Amy Domini
In the last 30 years socially responsible investing has become a force to be reckoned with, and for that you can thank Amy Domini. She was involved in the shareholder activism that leveraged U.S. companies to bring about peaceful political change in South Africa, and created the Domini 400 Social Index in 1990 with her partners at KLD Research & Analytics, to show that there was no performance penalty for using social and ethical screens in the investment process. "It proved over time there was no cost. In fact, on balance, there’s a profit," she argues, adding that over the past 20 years the Domini 400 has outperformed the S&P 500. Not slowing down at all, the founder and CEO of Domini Social Investments most recently wrote Socially Responsible Investing: Making a Difference and Making Money.—RFK (For more, see The Green Advisor, page 92)

Steve Jobs
The average advisor does not use a Macintosh at work, and Blackberries are far more common in advisor cellphone holsters than iPhones, but independent advisors couldn’t exist without the user interface approach that Apple’s Steve Jobs popularized, and his company’s commitment to making personal computers that could easily be used by non-technical folks lies at the heart of every broker/dealer or custodial technology platform that independent advisors use daily. If it’s true, as LPL’s Todd Robinson said in an April interview that advances in desktop computing over the past 30 years made it possible for "professional portfolio management to be brought to the individual," then Jobs’s graphical user interface made it possible for the advisor to manage that PM tool. With mobile computing the next technology frontier, Jobs and Apple are still leading the way with the iPhone, iPhone apps, and the iPad.—JG

Michael Milken
His indictment for racketeering and fraud and his second career as a philanthropist and innovation incubator are not why Michael Milken was chosen for the IA30, but rather his role in introducing high-yield bonds to the advisor’s investment toolchest and the entrepreneur’s capital options. As head of bond trading at Drexel Burnham Lambert, Milken helped build a junk bond market that was worth about $150 billion by 1990 and financed a raft of mergers, acquisitions, buyouts, and hostile takeovers as well as providing funding for a number of today’s leading corporations. After his 1989 guilty plea to six securities and reporting violations, Milken spent two years in prison and was barred from the securities industry for life, but in 2009 Forbes ranked him in a 25-way tie for 158th wealthiest American with a net worth of $2 billion.—RFK

Chuck Schwab
If the measure of success for a business owner is that the business can run just fine without him, and if imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, then Charles Schwab is even more successful, and more flattered, than he has been at building the top discount broker, then the first mutual fund supermarket, and his crowning achievement for IA 30 for 30 purposes, finally the premier custodian for independent advisors. Schwab Advisor Services, the institutional house that Chuck built, continues to focus on servicing its existing advisors and staying ahead of the curve whether by playing matchmaker for breakaway brokers with existing Schwab clients or, most recently, transforming the business model of the exchange traded fund marketplace by offering its own stable of commission-free, low-cost ETFs: the flattery has already started.—JG

Eric Schwartz
Thirty years ago, independent broker/dealer reps were mostly commissioned salespeople who differed from their wirehouse brethren only in their higher payouts and in getting 1099s rather than W-2s. Eric Schwartz, founder, chairman, and CEO of Cambridge Investment Research, helped change all that by being the first broker/dealer to wholeheartedly embrace the fee approach long before the term "hybrid advisor" entered common parlance, with the open-architecture platform that a fee-friendly approach requires. Despite the early fee adoption—which nearly all independent B/Ds have since emulated—Schwartz was less a zealot than a pragmatist who saw a business opportunity and grabbed it. As a founding member of the FSI, Schwartz helped unify the entire IBD industry, and as the group’s chairman last year, he was particularly proud of bringing smaller firms into the FSI fold—firms that were the size of Cambridge until the fee mantra helped drive Cambridge’s growth.—JG

Mark Tibergien
In the eight years that Investment Advisor has been identifying the most influential people in and around the advisory profession, only one name has been included every year—Mark Tibergien. Currently the CEO of Pershing Advisor Solutions, Tibergien established his reputation as the industry’s foremost practice management guru during his years as principal and partner in charge of the securities niche at Moss Adams in Seattle, author of several books, and as a long-time Investment Advisor columnist.

"I think that one of the biggest changes that has occurred is that advisors are now dealing with clients who are more informed, but they’re not more knowledgeable, necessarily," Tibergien observes. "This puts a special onus on the advisor for how they deliver advice."

An even more profound change is the emergence of advisory practices as businesses. "Thirty years ago there was more of a tendency to see this business as large employer-based companies," he says. "Now you see literally thousands of independent financial professionals running their own enterprises, whether they’re affiliated with an independent broker/dealer or operating as an RIA." The special challenge for those thousands? "Not only do they have to be current and sophisticated in how they render advice, but they have to have the ability to run a business as well."

Looking toward the future, Tibergien sees an increasing regulatory burden being placed on advisors as just one factor. "The profession generally is experiencing market squeeze," he continues. "Clients are becoming more sophisticated in the questions they’re asking and more cynical about the advice they’re getting. There is an acute talent shortage, yet there’s an oversupply of clients." One of the biggest challenges will be how the profession handles the succession of the current generation of firm owners, he predicts, and whether it can provide a "compelling career track" to attract young advisors in sufficient numbers to meet the demand.—RFK

(Read more of the interview with Mark Tibergien here.)

Don Trone
You could call him Mr. Fiduciary. Don Trone, CEO of Strategic Ethos, has been championing the fiduciary standard for decades, long before founding the Center for Fiduciary Studies, the Foundation for Fiduciary Studies, and Fiduciary Analytics in 1999. Trone was recently commissioned by the Financial Planning Association (FPA) to create a series of books that define a fiduciary standard for each of the financial planning pillars. "If you think about the historic work that I’ve been involved in, it’s been focused on defining a fiduciary standard for investment management," Trone says. The fiduciary guides will be called Fiduciary Ethos-FPA Edition, and volume one will detail the investment management fiduciary standard. Additional volumes will focus on the general principles of financial planning; insurance planning and risk management; employee benefits planning; income tax planning; retirement planning; and estate planning.—MW

Skip Viragh
Advisors who take their fiduciary duties seriously in building a well-diversified portfolio are sure to include some alternative investments, and not because their clients want to be able to brag that they’re invested in a currency ETF, or because a given alternative strategy might be yielding a higher return at the moment. No, they’re included because these alternatives provide actual diversification and can ameliorate risk in a portfolio, and nobody gives it a second thought. It wasn’t always that way, however, and the late Albert "Skip" Viragh can be given credit for that sea change. As founder of Rydex Investments, now part of Securities Global Investors, Viragh, who died in 2003, was instrumental in launching a wave that has become a tsunami: bringing institutional-level investment vehicles to the individual client level, while keeping advisors in the mix to ensure those sophisticated investing tools are used correctly.—JG

Al West
You may not know Al West, but you know the company that he co-founded in 1968—SEI—and you likely take advantage of the approach that he helped pioneer: outsourcing. SEI began life as a tech outsourcing firm to bank trust departments, but West helped translate that approach into investing, building a powerhouse public company that through its SEI Advisor Network subsidiary serves 6,500 advisors (250 RIAs added in 2009) with back-office administration services and manages more than $27 billion in advisor AUM. Its practice management offerings are gaining traction, too, all of which appears to pay off for advisors—a 2008 Moss Adams survey found that broker/dealer reps who affiliated with SEI boasted significantly higher client AUM, revenue, and clients.—JG

Thirty for Thirty Part I

List of the 30 most influential individuals in and around the planning profession over the last three decades.

We present for your consideration 30 individuals who over the past 30 years—the period in which Investment Advisor has been serving independent and independent-minded advisors—have been most influential in building this profession that you practice, who provided the theoretical basis for your quotidian practicality, who used their positions among your partners and peers, in government and regulation, to make your professional life viable, and those who kept a sharp focus on what’s most important. We believe, too, that they will continue to influence your lives and those of your clients into the next 30 years.

PIONEERS & PRACTITIONERS

John Bogle
Founding Vanguard, the industry’s largest mutual fund company, and in 1975 creating the first index mutual fund, the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, not to mention authoring seven books on mutual funds, investing, and capitalism that have collectively sold more than half a million copies, would be a list of accomplishments enough to qualify John C. Bogle for the IA30, but those only begin to explain his influence. Bogle celebrates his 81st birthday this month, and still reports to work every day at the Bogle Financial Markets Research Center, working tirelessly on behalf of American investors and to a large degree acting as the public conscience of the industry, reminding the entire financial services world—and the Congress and regulators in his recurring invited testimony—of their responsibilities to the investor. "I’d just like to bring common sense, reality, and mathematical truth back into the world of investing," he says of his self-imposed crusade.

He decries changes in the mutual fund industry that have resulted in thousands of choices for investors but have also changed the character of the industry from one that encouraged investing for a lifetime to one of looking for a quick score. "The industry changed to becoming a much more speculative industry," Bogle says, pointing to the creation of "a lot more speculative funds…all those kinds of funds that we now have to choose from that have very little to do with the market."

Not surprisingly, Bogle remains evangelical in his belief that index funds are the only way to go for the average American who over the long term wants to capture the returns offered by the stock and bond markets. He observes that the current culture rewards managers for taking risks, but if those risks pay off, too much of the profits go to the managers and the company they work for, rather than to the fund’s real owners—the shareholders.

Acknowledging that it’s a radical idea in a climate where a financial consumer protection agency can’t even draw political support, Bogle says he’d like to see a federal statute of fiduciary duty requiring fund managers to put the interests of their shareholders first. He calls that the "ethical principles solution," but he’d be just as happy to see what he calls "the Adam Smith principle solution," in effect. Under that scenario, "investors would only look intelligently after their own interest," he explains, which in Bogle’s opinion means buying index funds. "The index fund will capture your fair share of the market’s returns," he says, noting that with index funds responsible for only about 20% of equity mutual fund assets, much more has to be done to educate investors.

For advisors, Bogle has some common sense advice: "Put the client first, not only in letter, but in spirit. Look to the wisdom of long-term investing and stay as far as possible from the folly of short-term speculation. Don’t reach for yield. Don’t reach for performance. Those things generally have unhappy, even tragic outcomes. Invest the money of your clients’ the way you would invest your own."—Robert F. Keane (RFK)

(Read more of the interview with John Bogle here.)

Harold Evensky
One major theme for the next decade will be a "continued move toward fiduciary advice," says Harold Evensky, president and CEO of Evensky & Katz Wealth Management, who in the eyes of much of the consumer world is the independent financial planner, and among his peers is the consensus eminence grise. While the Dodd legislation may not include a fiduciary standard for brokers, the SEC and FINRA "are committed to it," he says, and even SIFMA "is coming along." Advisors can expect to be dealing with a decade-long low interest-rate environment, so "the management of expenses and taxes is going to be extraordinarily important," areas where advisors "can offer real value." Since he expects a "volatile [market] environment" to continue, advisors must remain focused on "transitioning from an accumulation universe to a distribution world" which will hold a raft of new products, and where "advisors will have to understand a whole new world of annuities."—MW

Ken Fisher
With more than 24,000 clients, 1,000 employees, and $39 billion in assets under management, Fisher Investments is about as big as it gets in the advisory world, but that doesn’t mean it’s finished growing, because as founder and CEO Ken Fisher quips, "I’ve got no market share." Fisher observes that when he started his firm in 1979, "there wasn’t even the beginning of the sense of the ’40 Act world as being businesses," he says. Advisory firms were "either very small and independent with no business-like quality to them, or something tacked onto the side to some other business like mutual funds, or a bank trust department. Today the investment advisory business has businesses." Due to its size Fisher Investments can accomplish what other advisory firms can’t, such as having a vertically integrated organization with a strict separation of product sales and client service, be the industry’s largest direct marketer, and hire a formally designated chief innovation officer.—RFK

(Read more of the IA interview with Ken Fisher here.)

Sheryl Garrett
When Sheryl Garrett first decided to charge clients on an hourly basis for financial planning in 1998, colleagues in the industry were skeptical. Although she no longer personally sees clients, today the Garrett Financial Network has about 310 advisors in 43 states, Thailand, China, and Kenya, providing financial checkups for a flat or hourly fee to tens of thousands of individuals and families in a process Garrett describes as "like going to the dentist, but hopefully not as painful." She’s confident that in time her business model will become much more widespread and she looks forward to a time when all advisors will be held to the same fiduciary standard, but she is aware "there needs to be thousands of us to meet the needs of the public as [they] begin to recognize what financial planning is and what we do," adding with a laugh that she’s not sure it will come in her lifetime.—RFK

Benjamin Graham
Although he shuffled off this mortal coil at the age of 82 in 1976, four years before the first issue of this magazine was published, Benjamin Graham’s influence on the advisory profession remains unparalleled. He was a mentor to Warren Buffett, who said he went to Columbia University because Graham taught there, and who has called Graham’s 1949 The Intelligent Investor "the best book on investing ever written."

Graham, the father of value investing, stressed the fundamental differences between investment and speculation. He was in favor of businesses paying dividends to shareholders rather than keeping profits as retained earnings and took a disciplined approach to bottom-up analysis. He never deviated from his belief that the key to making sound investments meant looking at the numbers and making intelligent decisions based on them. It’s an approach that will likely never go out of style with advisors and their clients.—RFK

Roger Ibbotson
The evangelist of asset allocation and diversification continues to keep the faith, a faith that arises not from revealed dogma, but from the more prosaic task of running the actual numbers and using a keen intellect to descry what those numbers mean in the real world of building portfolios that perform for real people over time. This is the accomplishment of Roger Ibbotson, who knows research as the founder and former chairman of Ibbotson Associates (sold to Morningstar in 2006), who knows academia as professor of finance at the Yale School of Management, and who puts money to work in actual portfolios as chairman and CIO of Zebra Capital.

"I think of myself as an economic historian," he said in an interview in early March, and sees his contribution as "making discoveries" about the capital markets and "bringing them into people’s lives."

While many believe that asset allocation and diversification failed during the 2008-2009 crisis, Ibbotson calls for a more nuanced understanding of their benefits, and the numbers convince him that they continued to work even in the meltdown. He notes that in 2008, about 25% of U.S.-listed stocks lost at least 75% of their value, "but only four of the more than 6,600 unlevered open-end mutual funds available for sale lost more than 75% in 2008—so diversification does work!"

Ibbotson has revisited Brinson-Hood-Bebower’s contention that asset allocation accounts for 90% of a portfolio’s return, arguing instead that the sources of variation of returns from a portfolio are around 75% from the overall market, with the remainder about equally split from portfolio-specific asset allocation policies and from individual securities in the portfolio, along with the timing of trades, and fees.—JG

Deena Katz
Three things will help the "relatively new" advisory profession continue on course: regulatory guidance, education, and research, says Deena Katz, who became the doyenne of financial planning practice management in her day job at Evensky & Katz Wealth Management and now midwifes the next generation of advisors as a professor at Texas Tech. "We have the body of knowledge and we’re starting to get regulatory guidance around what we do," Katz says. She was also hoping that 2010 would be the year when all advice givers would be held to a fiduciary standard.

As for education, Katz says the CFP Board’s new requirement come 2012 that those seeking certification must prepare and deliver a comprehensive financial plan "raises the bar."—MW

Ross Levin
If Ross Levin, founder of Accredited Investors in Edina, Minnesota, were to update his landmark 1996 opus The Wealth Management Index, he says he would include "more of the whys, rather than the hows." The book is out of print but you can still pick up a new copy on Amazon for only $600 (12 times its original publication cover price). The biggest changes Levin says he’s seen since he founded his firm in 1986 is the move to fee-only planning and "the democratization of financial planning. Now the subject has been brought to the masses and you can say you’re a financial planner without having to explain what that means."—RFK

Don Phillips
Don Phillips, managing director of Morningstar and creator of the style-box approach to investing, says the mutual fund industry today is "cleaner, fairer, and better" than it was 20 years ago. Now, advisors don’t put up with fund firms that provide sub-par services. The fund industry, Phillips adds, "has been responsive to the demands of the advisor community. Advisors want to be treated more like institutions and less like retail investors." In fact, he says, advisors today have more "tools and investments at their disposal than the top institutions had 15 years ago." Going forward, advisors are going to have "more and better tools to do their job," but Phillips warns that "as you get more complex tools, the ability to wield them incorrectly increases."—MW

Bill Sharpe
At a time when retirement planning has become critical to nearly every advisors’ practice, Nobel prize winner Bill Sharpe’s innovative idea to give everyone access to retirement advice through cutting-edge technology by launching Financial Engines in 1996 cannot be overlooked. Financial Engines’ recent IPO is just one sign of its success. Of the three qualified default investment alternatives—managed accounts, lifecycle funds, and balanced funds—managed accounts "make the most sense because they are presumably customized to each participant’s circumstances," says Ron Surz, president of PPCA Inc. Financial Engines announced last November that it now manages more than $25 billion in defined contribution assets in its managed account program.—MW

Anything but Damn !!

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945.

กฎ 10 ข้อในการอยู่รอดและการลงทุนด้วย การวิเคราะห์ทางเทคนิค By Investor Chart

กฎ ทั้ง10 ข้อนี้ เป็นหลักการสำคัญสำหรับผู้ที่ใช้วิธีการวิเคราะห์ทางเทคนิคสำหรับการลงทุน เพราะหากไม่มีหลักการดังกล่าวแล้ว เราก็จะไม่สามารถกำหนดการซื้อขายที่เป็นรูปแบบได้ ซึ่งในกฎเหล่านี้จะพูดถึงการวิเคราะห์แนวโน้ม , หาจุดกลับตัว, ติดตามค่าเฉลี่ย, มองหาสัญญาณเตือน และอื่นๆ หากท่านสามารถเข้าใจและปฎิบัติตามหลักการเหล่านี้ได้ผมเชื่อว่าท่าน ก็สามารถเอาตัวรอด ด้วยการลงทุนโดยใช้หลักการวิเคราะห์ทางเทคนิค ได้ครับ

• ดูแนวโน้ม (Trend is Your Friend)

เรียนรู้ชาร์ตในระยะยาว โดยเริ่มการวิเคราะห์ชาร์ตในระดับเดือนและสัปดาห์ ของช่วงเวลาหลายๆปี การดูชาร์ตในระดับของช่วงเวลาที่กว้างขึ้นจะทำให้สามารถมองเป็นแนวโน้มของตลาดในระยะยาวได้ชัดเจนขึ้น เมื่อทราบถึงแนวโน้มระยะยาวแล้ว จึงจะดูชาร์ตในระดับวันและนาที การดูแนวโน้มในช่วงสั้นเพียงอย่างเดียวจะทำให้เกิดความผิดพลาดได้ ถึงแม้ว่าคุณจะลงทุนในระยะสั้น คุณจะได้ผลตอบแทนที่ดีกว่าหากคุณลงทุนในทิศทางเดียวกับแนวโน้มในระยะกลางและยาว

• วิเคราะห์และไปตามแนวโน้ม (Analyze investment using suitable Time Frame)

แนวโน้มของตลาดมีหลายช่วงเวลา ระยะยาว ระยะกลาง และระยะสั้น สิ่งแรกคือ คุณต้องรู้ว่าคุณจะลงทุนในระยะเวลาเท่าใด และวิเคราะห์ชาร์ตของช่วงเวลาที่เหมาะสม โดยที่คุณต้องแน่ใจว่าคุณลงทุนไปในทิศทางเดียวกับแนวโน้มในระยะเวลานั้นๆ ซื้อเมื่อแนวโน้มอยู่ในขาขึ้น และขายเมื่อแนวโน้มอยู่ในขาลง หากคุณลงทุนในระยะกลาง ให้ใช้ชาร์ตในระดับวันและสัปดาห์ ถ้าคุณลงทุนระยะสั้น ให้ใช้ชาร์ตระดับวันและรายนาที อย่างไรก็ตาม ในแต่ละกรณี ให้ดูแนวโน้มของช่วงเวลาที่ยาวขึ้น และใช้ชาร์ตของช่วงเวลาที่สั้นลงในการหาจุดที่จะเข้าซื้อ-ขาย

• หาจุดสูงสุดและต่ำสุด (Support and Resistance are crucial)

วิเคราะห์แนวรับและแนวต้าน จุดที่ดีที่สุดในการเข้าซื้อก็คือจุดใกล้แนวรับซึ่งมักจะเป็นจุดต่ำสุดของรอบการซื้อขายที่แล้ว จุดที่ดีที่สุดสำหรับการขายก็คือจุดที่ใกล้แนวต้าน ซึ่งมักจะเป็นจุดสูงสุดของรอบการซื้อขายที่แล้ว หากมีการเคลื่อนผ่านแนวต้าน แนวต้านนั้นจะกลายเป็นแนวรับสำหรับการปรับตัวลดลง อีกนัยหนึ่ง จุดสูงสุดเดิมกลายเป็นจุดสูงสุดใหม่ และเช่นเดียวกัน ในกรณีที่ราคาทะลุผ่านแนวรับ มักจะมีแรงขายออกมาอย่างต่อเนื่อง ทำให้จุดต่ำสุดเดิมกลายเป็นจุดต่ำสุดใหม่

• รู้ว่าจะไปไกลแค่ไหนจึงจะกลับตัว (Estimate Extension or Pullback using Fibonacci)

เทียบอัตราส่วนการขึ้น-ลง เป็นเปอร์เซนต์ โดยทั่วไปตลาดจะมีการกลับตัวทั้งขึ้นและลงตามสัดส่วนเปอร์เซนต์ของแนวโน้มของช่วงก่อน คุณสามารถวัดอัตราส่วนของการปรับตัวขึ้นหรือลงของแนวโน้มปัจจุบันได้โดยใช้อัตราส่วนชุดหนึ่งที่มีการกำหนดค่าไว้แล้ว เช่น การกลับตัวขึ้นหรือลง 50%ของแนวโน้มก่อน เป็นอัตราพื้นฐานที่ใช้กันบ่อย อัตราส่วนต่ำสุดของการวัดการดีดกลับ คือ 1/3 ของแนวโน้มก่อน และอัตราส่วนสูงสุดคือ 2/3 อัตราส่วนที่สำคัญและควรให้ความสนในก็คือ อัตราส่วน Fibonacci 36% และ 62% ดังนั้น เมื่อตลาดมีการพักในช่วงแนวโน้มขาขึ้น จะมีจุดซื้อคืนจุดแรกเมื่อตลาดปรับตัวลง 33-38% ของจุดสูงสุด

• ใช้เส้นแนวโน้ม (Draw Trendline)

เส้นแนวโน้มเป็นหนึ่งในเครื่องมือการวิเคราะห์ที่ง่ายและมีประสิทธิภาพที่สุด สิ่งที่ต้องคำนึงถึงมีเพียงขอบเขตที่เส้นแนวโน้มแสดงและจุด 2 ตำแหน่งบนชาร์ต เส้นแนวโน้มขาขึ้นวาดโดยใช้จุดต่ำสุด 2 จุด ที่อยู่ใกล้กัน และเส้นแนวโน้มขาขึ้นวาดโดยใช้จุดสูงสุด 2 จุดใกล้กัน ราคาของหุ้นมักจะเคลื่อนเข้าใกล้เส้นแนวโน้มก่อนที่จะเคลื่อนกลับเข้าสู่แนวโน้มของมัน หากราคาทะลุผ่านเส้นแนวโน้ม จะแสดงถึงสัญญาณของการเปลี่ยนแนวโน้ม เส้นแนวโน้มจะมีผลเมื่อราคาเคลื่อนแตะที่เส้น 3 ครั้งเป็นอย่างน้อย เส้นแนวโน้มที่ลากได้ยิ่งยาว หมายถึง จำนวนครั้งมากขึ้นของการทดสอบเส้นแนวโน้ม และยิ่งทำให้เส้นแนวโน้มมีความสำคัญมากขึ้น

• ติดตามค่าเฉลี่ย (Moving Average)

หมายถึงการเคลื่อนไหวของเส้นค่าเฉลี่ย ซึ่งจะบอกถึงราคาเป้าหมายที่จะซื้อและขาย เส้นค่าเฉลี่ยเหล่านี้แสดงให้เห็นว่าราคาอยู่ในแนวโน้มเช่นใดและช่วยยืนยันสัญญาณการเปลี่ยนแนวโน้ม อย่างไรก็ตาม เส้นค่าเฉลี่ยไม่ใช่เครื่องมือที่จะบอกล่วงหน้าว่าแนวโน้มกำลังจะเปลี่ยน รูปแบบของการใช้เส้นค่าเฉลี่ยที่เป็นที่นิยมคือการใช้เส้นค่าเฉลี่ย 2 เส้นเพื่อหาจุดซื้อ-ขาย ค่าที่นิยมใช้สำหรับค่าเฉลี่ยที่ใช้คู่กันคือ 5 วันและ10 วัน, 10 วันและ25วัน, 25 วันและ 50 วัน สัญญาณซื้อ-ขายเกิดขึ้นเมื่อเส้นที่มีค่าเฉลี่ยสั้นกว่าตัดกับเส้นที่ยาวกว่า หรือ เมื่อราคาเคลื่อนผ่านเส้นค่าเฉลี่ย 25 วัน เนื่องจากเส้นค่าเฉลี่ยต่างๆเป็นดัชนีที่เคลื่อนไปตามแนวโน้ม การใช้เส้นค่าเฉลี่ยจึงเหมาะสำหรับตลาดที่ในช่วงที่มีแนวโน้มที่ชัดเจน

• รู้ถึงจุดที่ตลาดกลับตัว (Overbought/Oversold)

Oscillators (เครื่องมือที่มีตัวเลข ตั้งแต่ 0 ถึง 100) เป็นดัชนีที่ช่วยชี้บอกจุดที่มีการซื้อหรือขายมากเกินไป ในขณะที่เส้นค่าเฉลี่ยจะช่วยยืนยันว่าตลาดการเปลี่ยนแนวโน้ม Oscillators จะช่วยเตือนล่วงหน้าว่าตลาดเคลื่อนไปในทิศทางใดทิศทางหนึ่งมากเกินไป และทำให้เกิดการกลับตัว Oscillators ที่เป็นที่นิยม ได้แก่ Relative Strength Index (RSI) และ Stochastics ทั้งสองตัวนี้จัดเป็นเครื่องมือที่เรียกว่า Oscillators เพราะให้ค่าที่อยู่ในช่วง 0 ถึง 100 เมื่อ RSI มีค่าเกิน 70 จะแสดงถึงการซื้อที่มีมากเกินไป (Overbought) และ ต่ำกว่า 30 แสดงถึงการขายมากเกินไป (Oversold) ค่า Overbought และ Oversold สำหรับ Stochastics คือ 80 และ 20 นักลงทุนส่วนใหญ่ใช้ค่า 14 วันหรือสัปดาห์สำหรับการคำนวณ Stochastics และ 9 หรือ 14 วันหรือสัปดาห์สำหรับ RSI สัญญาณกลับตัวที่เกิดใน Oscillators จะเป็นสัญญาณเตือนว่าตลาดกำลังจะกลับตัว เครื่องมือเหล่านี้ใช้ได้ดีเมื่อตลาดอยู่ในช่วงที่เหมาะกับการเล่นเก็งกำไรและไม่แสดงแนวโน้มที่ชัดเจน สัญญาณในระดับสัปดาห์สามารถนำมาใช้ช่วยในการขจัดสัญญาณหลอกและยืนยันสัญญาณในระดับวัน และใช้สัญญาณระดับวันสำหรับยืนยันสัญญาณในรายนาที

• มองเห็นสัญญาณเตือน (Warning with MACD)

Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) เป็นดัชนีวัด (พัฒนาโดย Gerald Appel) ที่รวมเอาระบบการตัดผ่านของเส้นค่าเฉลี่ยและการชี้จุด Overbought/Oversold ของ Oscillators ไว้ด้วยกัน สัญญาณซื้อจะเกิดเมื่อเส้นที่เร็วกว่าตัดขึ้นเหนือเส้นที่ช้ากว่า โดยที่ทั้ง 2 เส้นอยู่ต่ำกว่าศูนย์ สัญญาณขายเกิดเมื่อเส้นที่เร็วกว่าตัดลงต่ำกว่าเส้นที่ช้ากว่าที่เหนือศูนย์ สัญญาณในระดับสัปดาห์จะมีน้ำหนักและความสำคัญมากกว่าสัญญาณในระดับวัน MACD histogram ซึ่งมีลักษณะเป็นแท่ง แสดงถึงส่วนต่างระหว่าง MACD ทั้งสองเส้น สามารถส่งสัญญาณเตือนว่าจะมีการเปลี่ยนแนวโน้มได้เร็วกว่าอีกด้วย

• เป็นแนวโน้มหรือไม่เป็นแนวโน้ม (Trending or Consolidation)

Average Directional Index (ADX) เป็นดัชนีที่จะบอกว่าตลาดอยู่ในช่วงที่มีแนวโน้มหรือไม่ และเป็นตัวช่วยวัดว่าแนวโน้มนั้นอยู่ในระดับใด เส้น ADX ที่ชี้ขี้นแสดงถึงแนวโน้มที่มีความชัดเจนมาก ควรใช้เส้นค่าเฉลี่ยในการวิเคราะห์ หากเส้น ADX ปรับตัวต่ำลง แสดงถึงตลาดที่ไม่มีแนวโน้มและเหมาะสำหรับเก็งกำไรระยะสั้น ควรใช้ Oscillators ในการวิเคราะห์ การใช้ ADX ช่วยนักลงทุนในการวางแผนกลยุทธ์การลงทุนและในการเลือกเครื่องมือที่เหมาะสมกับสภาวะตลาด

• รู้จักการดูสัญญาณเพื่อยืนยันแนวโน้ม (Confirmation by Volume & Open Interest)

สัญญาณที่ให้การยืนยันรวมถึงปริมาณการซื้อขายและจำนวนการซื้อขายที่มีการลงทุนจากผู้ที่เข้ามาซื้อขายใหม่ (open interest) ทั้ง 2 ตัวนี้เป็นเครื่องมือสำคัญในการยืนยันแนวโน้มสำหรับตลาดล่วงหน้า ปริมาณการซื้อขายมักจะส่งสัญญาณกลับตัวก่อนที่ราคาจะกลับตัว สิ่งสำคัญคือจะต้องมั่นใจว่ามีปริมาณการซื้อขายอย่างหนาแน่นในทิศทางเดียวกับแนวโน้มปัจจุบัน ในแนวโน้มขาขึ้น ควรมีปริมาณการซื้อขายที่มากขึ้นเพื่อยืนยันว่าแนวโน้มนั้นยังแข็งแรงอยู่ ส่วน open interest ที่เพิ่มขึ้นนั้นจะช่วยยืนยันว่ามีเงินไหลเข้ามาต่อเนื่องและช่วยหนุนให้แนวโน้มปัจจุบันคงอยู่ หาก open interest ลดลง ย่อมเป็นสัญญาณเตือนว่าแนวโน้มนั้นใกล้สิ้นสุดลง ดังนั้นราคาที่มีแนวโน้มสูงขึ้นควรจะมีปริมาณซื้อขายและ open interest หนุนอยู่ด้วย

ความเห็นของ Guru มุมมอง ท่านคัดท้าย

หลายเว็บบอร์ดหุ้นในไทยต่างก็มีแนวทางมุมมองของสมาชิกไปในทางเดียวกัน เช่น ข้อความใน greenbull.net จะออกไปแนวเก็งกำไรระยะสั้น ส่วน thaivi.com จะออกแนวลงทุนระยะยาว แต่ความเห็นของ 'คัดท้าย' ในกระทู้นี้แสดงความเห็นมุมมองที่มีต่อตลาดหุ้นไทยในลักษณะที่ผสมผสานยากจะระบุว่าออกไปในทางไหน แต่ทั้งหมดถูกประมวลจากประสบการณ์ที่อยู่กับหุ้นไทยมานานกว่าสิบปี

'คัดท้าย' ได้ประมวลความคิดมาเป็นหลัก 6 ประเภท คือ ความเชื่อส่วนตัว, การวิเคราะห์เชิงพื้นฐาน, การวิเคราะห์เชิงเทคนิค, กลยุทธ์และจิตวิทยาการเข้าซื้อ, การดูแลรักษาปรับพอร์ตและขาย, การบริหารความเสี่ยง มีใจความดังนี้

ความเชื่อส่วนตัว

1. เงินมาจากกระเป๋าคนอื่น กฎทุกกฎจะ Relate กับกฎทองข้อแรกนี้ คนทั่วไปอาจจะบอกว่าเงินมาจากนักลงทุนคนอื่นๆ ที่เสียให้เรา แต่จริงๆ รวมไปถึงคนซื้อของที่จ่ายเงินให้ธุรกิจที่เราเป็นเจ้าของด้วย

2. คนส่วนใหญ่ที่เล่นหุ้น จะเสียเงินมากกว่าได้เงินถ้าเมื่อใด คนส่วนใหญ่คิดอะไรเหมือนกันหมด เห็นดีเห็นงามเหมือนกันหมด คิดว่าหุ้นจะขึ้นเหมือนกันหมด... คิดว่าหุ้นจะลงเหมือนกันหมด... มันใกล้จะเป็นจุดหักเหแล้ว... โดยเฉพาะมุมมองในแง่ดี

3. กราฟเชิงเทคนิค ก็ตำราเดียวกัน อะไรที่คนรู้มากๆ แล้วไม่ปลอดภัย ถ้าเรารู้ คนอื่นรู้ เจ้ามือก็รู้ สัญญาณก็จะกลายเป็นกับดัก จะเห็นได้ว่าข้อนี้เกี่ยวกับกฎทองข้อที่สอง

4. ข่าวดี ข่าวร้าย ส่วนใหญ่ในตลาดใช้สร้างโมเมนตัมของทิศทางราคา ไม่ใช่ทำให้เกิดการไล่ราคา โดยเฉพาะหุ้นที่มีสภาพคล่องสูง

5. ไม่มีใครรู้จริงเรื่องราคาหุ้น แม้แต่เจ้ามือก็เจ๊งบ่อย การบริหารความเสี่ยงเป็นเรื่องสำคัญ

6. หาหุ้นที่มีความสามารถในการแข่งขันแบบยั่งยืนในตลาดหุ้นไทยเหมือนงมเข็มในมหาสมุทร ยิ่งถ้าหาโอกาสซื้อในราคาที่มีส่วนลด ยิ่งยาก

7. ธุรกิจในเมืองไทย ไม่สามารถขยายตัวได้เท่ากับ ธุรกิจในอเมริกา ทำให้ตลาดไทยมี Cycle ที่สั้นกว่าตลาดอเมริกามาก และไม่ควรนำมาเปรียบเทียบกัน เทียบกันง่ายๆ ส่วนใหญ่หุ้น IPO ที่เข้ามาในเมืองไทย มักขยายตัวไปเต็มพื้นที่ในประเทศ หรือใกล้ตันแล้ว ไม่ได้มีพื้นที่ที่จะขยายตัวได้อย่างเหลือเฟือ... แต่ถ้าเป็นธุรกิจในอเมริกา ธุรกิจหนึ่งอาจขายดีในระดับรัฐ แล้วก็เข้าตลาดหุ้น สามารถขยายได้อีก 50 รัฐ... แล้วเมื่อไปทั่วอเมริกา เขาก็สามารถขยายไปทั่วโลกได้ มีความสามารถในการแข่งขัน... หุ้นเมืองไทยไม่ใช่แบบนั้น การจะเอามาเปรียบเทียบกัน ต้องทำด้วยความระมัดระวัง

8. การถือหุ้นของกิจการดี แต่ไม่เติบโตหรือเติบโตน้อย ในราคาที่ไม่มีส่วนลดที่เพียงพอ ไม่ใช่การลดความเสี่ยง เพราะวันใดวันหนึ่งความเสี่ยงก็ย่อมเกิดขึ้นได้

9. การถือหุ้นที่กิจการไม่ดี ในราคาที่ไม่มีส่วนลดที่มากเพียงพอ เป็นการกระทำที่ 'โคตรเสี่ยง'

10. การถือหุ้นที่กิจการกำลังเติบโต ในราคาที่มีส่วนลด เป็นการลดความเสี่ยง

11. กลยุทธ์และแผนงาน เหนือกว่าความสามารถส่วนบุคคล

12. ไม่เคยเชื่อเรื่องธรรมาภิบาล ทุกคนทำเพื่อผลประโยชน์ของตัวเอง ซึ่งไม่ได้ผิดอะไร แต่ให้ใส่ใจกับเจ้าของที่มีโอกาสทำเลวเกินพิกัด เมืองไทยไม่ใช่ประเทศธรรมาภิบาล ดูจากสังคมและการเมืองได้ และตลาดหุ้นก็น่าจะซึมซับพฤติกรรมมาไม่มากก็น้อย ทุกอย่างเกิดขึ้นได้ เป็นคนไทยต้องดูแลตัวเอง

13. แม้ว่าเราควรจะคิดให้เหมือนเป็นเจ้าของบริษัท แต่เจ้าของบริษัทไม่ได้คิดว่าเราเป็นเจ้าของ... ดังนั้นข้อมูลที่เราได้ ก็ไม่ใช่ข้อมูลที่เจ้าของได้

14. แม้แนวคิด value investor จะบอกว่าให้คิดเหมือนเราซื้อทั้งบริษัท แต่ความเป็นจริงคือ เราไม่มีเงินมากขนาดนั้น และสิทธิที่เราได้ก็จะมีเท่าเงินของเรา หลังจากเราซื้อ เราก็เอาเงินของเราไปให้คนอื่นดูแล หากคุณให้เงินเพื่อนยืมไปทำบริษัท คุณอาจจะบอกว่าเสี่ยงมาก แต่จริงๆ แล้ว เพื่อนยืมเงินคุณยังอาจขอไปดูโรงงาน ขอเปิดบัญชีดู มอมเหล้าให้คายความลับ และเพื่อนก็ยังอาจจะเกรงใจคุณอยู่บ้าง แต่เจ้าของบริษัทมหาชนคงไม่สนใจคนที่ถือหุ้น 30,000 หุ้นเท่าไร เขาอาจจะหันมายิ้มแล้วตอบคำถามต่างๆ แต่ก็ไม่รู้จะเชื่อคำตอบได้แค่ไหน

15. ดังนั้นข้อมูลที่เราได้ ก็จะมาจากข้อมูลวงนอกที่เราพอจะหาได้ ได้แก่ งบเก่าๆ, กราฟ, ส่วนแบ่งตลาด, ตัวเลขและแนวโน้มกลุ่มธุรกิจ ฯลฯ แต่จากประสบการณ์ทำให้เชื่อขึ้นทุกทีว่า จริงๆ เราเป็นกูไม่รู้ (Gu (not) ru) คือเราไม่ได้รู้อย่างที่เราคิดว่าเรารู้ อย่าลืมคิดเรื่องการบริหารความเสี่ยงไว้เสมอ เวลาซื้อหุ้น ควรบอกตัวเองว่า ถ้าเกิดเรื่องที่ไม่คาดฝัน เราจะทำอย่างไร

16. หุ้นเมืองไทยยากนักที่ราคา (เน้นว่าราคา ไม่ใช่มูลค่า) จะสวนกระแสพิษเศรษฐกิจได้ ถ้าไม่ชอบเห็นหุ้นตัวเองราคาหายไปครึ่งหนึ่ง ควรจะคำนึงถึงภาวะเศรษฐกิจด้วยหุ้นอะไรก็ตามยากจะต้านภาวะแย่ๆ ได้ ถ้าซื้อหุ้น 10 บาทแล้วลงไป 3 บาท ไม่รู้สึกอะไรก็ไม่ต้องสนใจเรื่องนี้ ด้วยความเชื่อทั้งหมดนี้ จึงควรหาหุ้นที่มี Downside Risk ต่ำ มี Upside Gain สูง และมีสภาพธุรกิจอยู่ในขาขึ้น (Uptrend) ถือไปเรื่อยๆ จนกว่ารู้สึกว่าไม่ปลอดภัย

การวิเคราะห์พื้นฐานเชิงคุณภาพ

นักการเงิน คนเรียนบัญชี และพนักงานสินเชื่อ มีความสามารถในด้านการเงินมากกว่าเราหลายเท่านัก และคนกลุ่มนี้ก็เล่นหุ้นกันเพียบ ถ้าเพียงแค่การวิเคราะห์งบจะบอกอะไรได้หมด คนกลุ่มนี้ก็รวยกันไปหมดแล้ว แต่ความจริงคือไม่ใช่ แปลว่าต้องมีอะไรมากกว่านี้

หุ้นจะมีสภาพ Uptrend อย่างโดดเด่นได้ ต้องมีการเปลี่ยนแปลงจากพื้นฐานอย่างอื่นที่ไม่ใช่งบ เช่น วงรอบธุรกิจ (ปิโตรฯ เรือ) การขยายงาน การเปลี่ยนแปลงนโยบายการลงทุน เช่น กองทุนอสังหาฯ ฯลฯ การวิเคราะห์งบใช้เพียงเพื่อบอกว่าธุรกิจมีสุขภาพที่ดีหรืออ่อนแอ แพงไปหรือถูกในปัจจุบัน แค่นั้น อีกเรื่องที่ดูคือ ดูความแข็งแกร่งว่าหากโดนคู่แข่งเจาะเข้ามา จะมีความสามารถในการป้องกันแค่ไหน ผูกขาดไหม ข้อมูลนี้ใช้ดูว่าจะกล้าถือได้นานแค่ไหน ถือแค่เก็งการเติบโต 6 เดือน หรือถือลงทุน 3 ปี เป็นต้น

การวิเคราะห์เชิงเทคนิค

ใช้เพื่อหาราคาที่จะเข้าซื้อ หุ้นที่จะใช้วิธีการนี้ ควรมีสภาพคล่อง ข้อมูลทางเทคนิคไม่ควรใช้กับหุ้นขาดสภาพคล่องทั้งวันซื้อขายไม่กี่ไม้ ควรเป็นหุ้นที่มีผู้ดูแลที่นิสัยไม่แย่เกินไป โดยดูจากกราฟ ที่ผ่านๆ มา หุ้นที่มีคนดูแลนิสัยเข้ากับเราจะเล่นได้สบายใจ ส่วนใหญ่เทคนิคจะใช้หาจุดที่เข้าซื้อหุ้น การหาจุดต่ำสุดนั้นยากมาก จึงต้องใช้...

กลยุทธ์และจิตวิทยาการเข้าซื้อ

เทคนิคกับพื้นฐาน สามารถใช้คู่กันได้ในการหาจุดเข้าซื้อ โดยหาแนวรับในเชิงเทคนิคไว้ก่อน แล้ว Map แต่ละจุดดูว่า ค่าที่จุดรับต่างๆ นั้น ให้ค่าพื้นฐาน เช่น P/E P/BV อยู่ที่เท่าไร ราคาประเมินนั้นถูกหรือแพง แล้วดูว่าแนวรับแต่ละแนวเป็นไปได้มากหรือน้อย แล้วก็ทยอยรับตามจุดต่างๆ ลงมากรับมาก ลงน้อยรับน้อย แต่มักพบว่าในสถานการณ์ปกติทั่วไปหุ้นดี มักจะลงไม่ถึงจุดที่ทุกคนคิดว่าถูกมากและปลอดภัยจนต้องซื้อ

การดูและรักษาปรับพอร์ต และขาย

1. จดจำเหตุผลที่คุณซื้อหุ้นใดๆ ไว้เสมอ และจำไว้ใช้เวลาขาย เช่น ถ้าคุณซื้อหุ้นเพราะกราฟ แล้วติดดอย คุณห้ามปลอบใจตัวเองว่าไม่เป็นไร หุ้นพื้นฐานดี อะไรแบบนี้ เพราะเวลาซื้อคุณไม่ได้คิดถึงพื้นฐาน

2. ขายเมื่อเหตุการณ์ไม่ได้เป็นไปตามที่คุณคิด โดยเฉพาะทางพื้นฐาน แยกความรู้กับความหวังออกจากกันให้ชัดเจน ต้องไม่หลอกตัวเอง

3. ขายเมื่อหุ้นได้ถึงเป้าหมายที่คาดเอาไว้ อย่าโลภเกิน เราหวัง เรารู้แค่ไหน ก็หวังแค่นั้น หรือไม่ถ้าเกินเป้าหมายแล้ว อยากถือต่อ ก็ควรบริหารความเสี่ยงโดยขายออกไปบ้าง

เมื่อเป็น Gu Not Ru แล้ว ถ้าผิดคาดต้องออกไปก่อนรู้ถูกไม่เท่าทำถูก เราต้องสร้างวินัยทำให้ได้ตามกฎที่เราตั้งขึ้นมา

การบริหารความเสี่ยง ซุนวูกล่าวไว้ว่า

"ขุนศึกที่ชนะ ออกรบเพื่อไปเอาชัยชนะ

ขุนศึกที่พ่ายแพ้ ออกรบเพื่อหวังชัยชนะ"

เล่นหุ้นไม่ต้องเล่นบ่อยๆ ต้องมั่นใจพอสมควร ไม่จำเป็นต้องลงทุนถ้าเราไม่มั่นใจ รอดีกว่าถ้าราคายังไม่ถูกใจ พื้นฐานยังไม่ถูกใจ สภาวะยังน่าเป็นห่วง บางคนบอกว่าเซียนหุ้นต้องลงทุนได้ทุกสภาวะ แต่ควรถือเสมอว่าเราไม่ได้เป็นเซียนหุ้น เห็นโอกาสแล้วค่อยลงทุน ไม่เสี่ยง

Intelligence Education What !!

"The difference between intelligence and an education is this-that intelligence will make you a good living".

Charles Franklin Kettering, An American inventor and the holder of 140 patents. He was a founder of Delco, and was head of research for General Motors for 27 years from 1920 to 1947.

Getting Tough on Wall Street

President Obama is now, finally, getting tough on Wall Street. Today he’s giving his support to two measures critically important for making sure the Street doesn’t relapse into another financial crisis

1. Separating the functions of investment banking from commercial banking (basically, resurrecting the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act) so investment banks can’t gamble with insured commerial deposits in order to scope of their risk-taking activities.
2. Giving regulatory authorities power to limit the size of big banks so they don’t become “too big to fail,” as antitrust laws do with every other capitalist entity.

The president, for the first time, will throw his weight behind an approach long championed by Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and an adviser to the Obama administration. The proposal will put limits on bank size and prohibit commercial banks from trading for their own accounts — known as proprietary trading.

Only a handful of large banks would be the targets of the proposal, among them Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street trading house, became a commercial bank during this latest crisis, and it would presumably have to give up that status.

Mr. Volcker has been trying for weeks to drum up support — on Wall Street and in Washington — for restrictions similar to those passed in the Glass-Steagall Act in 1933. That law separated commercial banking and investment banking, so that the investment arm could no longer use a depositor’s money to purchase stocks, sometimes drawing money from a savings account, for example, without the depositor’s knowledge.

The 1929 stock market crash and subsequent Depression made a shambles of that practice. But Glass-Steagall was watered down over the years and revoked in 1999.

The Shift In Sentiment

Reason to Sell Off Recently

1. President Obama has signaled that a scaled back healthcare bill will be looked into.
2. China posted a quarterly GDP of 10.7% on a year over year basis – This is too “hot” by any measure.
3. The Obama administration is looking to present legislation that will severely reduce proprietary trading at major financial institutions.
4. Initial Claims were 40,000 higher than expected this morning, showing that employment trends are not getting better
5. Japan’s lending by companies has hit mutli-year lows. Business recovery is in jeopardy.
6. Earnings from many companies in the U.S. are meeting and exceeding estimates, while revenues are inline.
7. The Euro continues to lag against the U.S. dollar are a flight to safety continues.
8. Bullish sentiment has been at over-heating levels, usually a contrary indicator.
9. The risk trade has been off for the same time the U.S dollar is moving higher.
10. Australia is talking about taxing some mining companies to bring in additional revenue.

Slate Again

Everyone has said that Apple's next event will occur on Tuesday, January 26th at the Yerba Buena Center.

Type of Stock & Option Order

Trailing stop limit. Market on close. Contingent orders. There are over 20 different order types available on the thinkorswim platform. Some are more complex than others, and you might believe that the more complex the order, the more “professional” or useful it is. Right? Well, sometimes yes. Sometimes no. The key is to understand how these orders work before you use them in live trading.

All orders, however complex, can be seen as variations on two basic themes: market and limit orders. A market order guarantees a fill but not a price. A limit order guarantees a price but not a fill. Period. The other 18 order types attempt to make your life a little easier, but they’re not meant to replace a real person monitoring positions. Let’s dive into the world of order types and learn how to manage them properly.

MARKET ORDER • With a market order, the broker is allowed to execute the order without regard to price or time. The broker will fill the order. But in exchange for that certainty, you have no idea what price you’ll get, or what time the order will be executed. In the world of electronic trading, the time until execution will likely be measured in milliseconds after you route the order. But the rule is that the broker isn’t held to anything but getting you a fill. Be warned: Unless you’re dealing with extremely liquid issues, such as QQQQ or SPY, market orders are like writing blank checks to the floor—rarely a good idea. A few other familiar order types that turn into market orders when they’re triggered include stops, trailing
stops, and market on close.

LIMIT ORDER • With a limit order, the broker can’t fill at a price that’s worse than your limit price. That is, you won’t pay more than your limit price when you’re buying, and you won’t sell lower than your limit price when you’re selling. That’s good because it gives you control over the price where you execute the order. But the downside is that you might not get filled if a market maker doesn’t want to take the other side of your order. A few other familiar order types that turn into limit orders when they’re triggered include stop limit, trailing stop limit, and limit on close.

The bottom line is, whether they’re market or limit, there is no order that guarantees both a fill and a price. You can have one or the other, but not both.

STOP ORDER • Beyond the standard market and limit order, probably the most well-known is the stop order, aka “stop loss.” A stop order is used mainly to protect against an adverse move in the stock price, and can be either a buy stop (used if you have a short stock position) or a sell stop (used if you have a long stock position).

If I were long 100 shares of XYZ with a price of $50, I could enter a sell stop order at $48. The way it works is if XYZ drops to $48, the stop is triggered and routes a market order to sell 100 shares of XYZ. Because it’s a market order, there’s no guarantee of price, and if XYZ gaps below $48, the stop order will be triggered, but the price where I sell XYZ could be much lower than $48. An extension of the stop order is the stop limit order, which triggers a limit order when the stop price is hit. If I set a stop limit order for my 100 shares of XYZ with a $48 stop and a $48 limit, and XYZ drops below $48, the limit order to sell the 100 shares at $48 will be routed. Because it’s a limit order, there’s no guarantee I’ll be filled, and XYZ could keep dropping and dropping. In practice, I might set the limit part a bit away from the stop order. With a stop price of $48, I might make the limit price $47.90. That way, I have a somewhat better chance of getting filled on my limit order when the stop is triggered. While stops and stop limits can reduce losses, they can’t really protect profits if the stock goes up and comes back down. That’s where trailing stops come in.

TRAILING STOP ORDER • Trailing stop orders behave like a ratchet: they move in one direction but not the other. The stop price is set at a certain number of pennies or points away from the current stock price. As the stock moves higher, so does the trailing stop, following the price of the stock but staying the same number of pennies away. Once the trailing stop ratchets up, it doesn’t ratchet back down if the stock moves down. If I set a trailing stop of 0.20 for my 100 shares of XYZ at $50, the initial stop is set at $49.80. If XYZ drops that 0.20 to $49.80, the trailing stop is triggered and a market order to sell the 100 shares of XYZ gets routed. But if XYZ goes up to $51, the trailing stop follows it higher. The 0.20 trailing stop will be set at $50.80. If XYZ goes higher still to $51.50, the trailing stop moves up to $51.30, which is 0.20 away from the stock price. Now, if XYZ drops to $51.30, the trailing stop is activated and routes a market order. In this way, a trailing stop can help protect profits.

CONDITIONAL ORDER • Conditional orders have to be triggered by an event before the order is actually routed: a stock hits a certain price, or volatility reaches a certain level, or a study gets to some value. Also known as contingency orders, these can be particularly useful when you’re trading options as a stock replacement.

Let me elaborate. If you’re selling a put vertical because you think the stock is going higher (or at least not down very much), then the speculation is really on the stock price itself. Sure, the vertical might meet your risk and potential reward criteria, but whether the trade makes money or not depends mainly on the stock price. So, it would stand to reason that you might want to exit the trade based on the price of the stock, particularly if the stock moves against you. If you are short an out-of-the-money put vertical on XYZ, which is trading at $50, you could enter a conditional order to buy that put spread back if XYZ drops to $47. You can choose for that conditional order to route a limit order or a market order when that condition is met. You can have the conditional order route a limit order that is a certain price, or a certain number of pennies above or below the spread’s average price.

Used properly, that can help you get the order filled. Now, suppose you want to give yourself a little more room when using a conditional order to close your defined risk, positive-time-decay trades if the stock starts to move against you. If you set a conditional order based on the stock price, it might get triggered at any time after you put the trade on, whether far from or close to expiration. This could all depend on the type of whipsawing action often seen in stocks (as opposed to true reversals), and it can take you out of trades prematurely. If the move happens far from expiration, you might still have some time for the stock to move back your way. Close to expiration, that’s less likely. So, you may want to enhance your conditional order strategy by placing a trading alert to notify you when the stock is getting close to your exit point. Being alerted when the stock is 0.50 away from that price gives you a chance to check your account, your positions, and the stock. It gives you time to think about the trade clearly, and exit it with perhaps a better plan. Of course, that all assumes that you haven’t done too many of these in the first place. How many risk management articles have we printed in this space? If the position is too big for your account, giving a trade “more room” can eventually kill you. That’s why prudent position sizing is so important.

OCO AND BRACKET ORDER • Beyond the specific order types are the OCOs and first-triggers orders, which are combinations of different limit, market, stop, trailing stop, and so on orders. OCO stands for “one cancels other,” and means that if one of the orders in the group is filled, the others will be canceled.

Bracket orders are what you call a limit order and stop order that are combined in an OCO group. You can create an order to buy 100 shares of stock, and simultaneously create an OCO that will trigger when you execute the buy. That’s what we call a “first triggers OCO,” because the execution of the first order (the buy) triggers that OCO with the limit order to sell and the sell stop. The OCO contains a limit order to sell the shares at a higher price to take a profit, and a stop order to sell them at a lower price to limit losses. If the limit order to sell is filled, it cancels the stop order. If the stop order is filled, it cancels the limit order.

Often, the bracket orders are set to GTC if the position isn’t being day traded. GTC, or “good ’til cancelled,” is an order that doesn’t expire at the end of the day as “DAY” orders do, but rather when it is either filled or you cancel it. Active day traders sometimes use bracket orders if they have to step away from their trading screens or if they’re trading multiple stocks or futures and can’t concentrate on all of them all the time.

FIRST TRIGGERS ORDERS • First triggers sequence and first triggers orders all work a bit like the first triggers OCO. The execution of the first order in the list either sends all the other orders in at once, or sends them sequentially: If the first is executed, it routes the second, and if the second is executed, it routes the third, etc. First triggers sequence orders can be used when you’re managing a long stock plus short covered call, for example. As time passes and if the stock doesn’t move higher, the short call drops in value. You may want to have an order in that would buy that short call back. Then, if the order to buy the short call back is filled, it routes a stop-loss order for the long stock position. Or maybe it routes an order to sell a call at either a different expiration or different strike price.

LOC OR MOC ORDER • LOC and MOC stand for limit on close and market on close. Simply, they route either a limit or a market order near the close of trading, approximately two minutes before. These orders were created mainly for institutional traders and fund managers who needed to execute orders close to the end-of-day settlement price for accounting purposes. Retail traders (that’s you) can use them, but they’re not really that useful. There’s no magic to the price of a stock, index, or option closer or further away from the close of trading. A trade that meets your criteria can pop up anytime during trading hours. When you spot one, don’t use an LOC or MOC and risk having a good trade get away from you between now and the close. Just trade it.

Bulletin of Economy 2010 Strategy

The 2010 Outlooks

Strategists, on average, see the S&P 500 gaining 9.5% to 1,222 and earning $76 per share in 2010

• Despite the view that the S&P 500 will gain over 9%, the consensus is to "underweight" or "benchmark" US equities
• Oil will rally slightly to $80
• Gold will rally to $1,213
• The Dollar vs the Euro will end 2010 at 1.45
• The US economy is expected to grow 3.1%
• The FRB will not hike interest rates until at least mid-2010

Themes for 2010:

1. Government balance sheet risk and Rising taxation
2. Alternative yield strategies
3. Financial sector rehabilitation
4. Corporate cash flow beneficiaries
5. Rising global growth and Emerging market consumers
6. Commodity price inflation
7. Return of active management
8. Alternative energy
9. Asia & Emerging-Market consumer (large-cap EM financial and consumer related stocks & US and Japanese multinationals)
10. Tightening plays as markets tighten by raising the price of commodities, the yield of gov't bonds, value of EM currencies: long global banks (including Japan) and large cap energy stocks
11. Hedge tail risks such as bubbles in China and gold, a double-dip, trade protectionism or a US dollar crisis by buying puts on volatility
12. Buy US companies that generate a high percentage of sales from BRICS
13. Invest in companies with high operating leverage that currently run at the bottom of their margin cycles
14. Buy stocks high Sharpe ratio
15. Looking ahead to 2H: free cash flow and dividend growth
16. Significant recovery upside but also downside risks: best of both worlds high-quality cheap stocks on normalized earnings
17. M&A up cycle beginning: buy aquisition targets
18. Rising rates: long brokers and short REITs
19. Stronger US dollar: long retailers and short energy
20. Overweight US versus Emerging Markets: long US financials and short EM financials
21. Flows follow: stay with value over growth
22. Uncertainty to decline: short S&P 500
23. 12m forward volatility
24. Stock rally to continue in a low rate world
25. Buy cyclicals now, own defensives later in the year
26. S&P 500 to rally to 1,300 in 1H then fall to 1,250 by year-end
27. Forecast Fed target rate unchanged until 2012

Dhamma for Living

"The Gift of Truth Excels all other Gifts".

By Fayan Wenyi, The Master of Zen

Market Efficient Really ?

Robert Shiller concluded from a longer history of stock market fluctuations that stock prices show far “too much variability” to be explained by an efficient-market theory of pricing, and that one must look to behavioral considerations and to crowd psychology to explain the actual process of price determination in the stock market.

What do we mean by saying markets are efficient ?

1. Markets can be efficient even if they sometimes make egregious errors in valuation. Markets can be efficient even if stock prices exhibit greater volatility than can apparently be explained by fundamentals such as earnings and dividends.
2. Economists view markets as amazingly successful devices for reflecting new info rapidly and, for the most part, accurately. Above all, we believe that financial markets are efficient because they don’t allow investors to earn above average returns without accepting above-average risks.
3. No one can consistently predict either the direction of the stock market or the relative attractiveness of individual stocks and thus no one can consistently obtain better overall returns than the market. And while there are undoubtedly profitable trading opportunities that occasionally appear, there are quickly wiped out once they become known. No one person or institution has yet to produce a long-term, consistent record of finding money-making, risk-adjusted individual stock-trading opportunities, particularly if they pay taxes and incur transactions costs.

Ideal iSlate ... This is What We Want

Apple tablet is coming to the light of day in 2010. But there is one more thing. Apple tablet device will be named iSlate. That would be in line with earlier connections of the 'slate' term to the elusive tablet computer. It might come with OLED as well.

In August 2008, a 52-page patent filed by Apple described how a touchscreen tablet might work. The patent described a device that would be able to detect simultaneous touches and gestures from two hands. But that hardly sounds like it would be surprising.

A new patent application that was appeared this week in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s database. Filed by Apple, the patent application is titled “Keystroke tactility arrangement on a smooth touch surface.” It describes a tactile-feedback mechanism for a touch surface keyboard to create physical bumps for the user to feel the keys.

Can't wait ? Get one of these ........ Super Duper Big iPod Touch

You Are What You Think

"It's not your salary that makes you rich, it's your spending habits."

By Charles A. Jaffe, A Belarusian-American chess master, of virtually Grandmaster strength

Happy New Year 2010 to All

May the New Year bring these Wishes to you all ...

Warmth of love, comfort of home

Joy from your children

Company and support of family & friends

A caring heart that accepts & treats all human beings equally

Enrichment of knowledge and richness of diversity

Courage to seek & speak the truth even if it means standing alone

Hopes and dreams of a just world and the desire to make it happen

A light to guide your path

Helping hands to strengthen unity

Serenity and peace within your mind, heart & soul

Food for thought & soul

A hand to hold

--- Many Thanks for all supports ---