Retirement Insights

What Is The Bond Yield Curve?

By McLean Asset Management

Understanding the relationship between bond risk and time to maturity and duration of a bond provides the basis for understanding the bond yield curve. The yield curve shows the yields to maturity for a series of bonds — typically U.S. Treasury bonds — with the same credit quality but different maturity dates, along with the…

Read More

Review: Individual stocks don’t even beat Treasury bills: James Saft

By McLean Asset Management

We all know diversification is important. But it’s always nice to be reminded just how important it is – and even better when you have news articles linking directly to academic papers like this one does. Hendrik Bessembinder, a researcher at Arizona State ran a really interesting analysis. If you look at individual stocks in…

Read More

Review: The fate of the stock market rests on Tom Brady’s shoulders

By McLean Asset Management

Investors can find signals anywhere, for better or worse. Apparently one of the better ones out there is the Super Bowl. Since 1967, when the AFC wins, the markets are down for the year. Unfortunately for me, I live in New England. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do… At least this time it seems…

Read More

What is a Reverse Mortgage, and How Does It Work?

By McLean Asset Management

Reverse mortgages have gotten a bad rap. Admittedly, a lot of it was deserved. A bad rap doesn’t just happen without something to base it on. But a lot has changed since Fred Thompson was selling them on daytime TV. Now, reverse mortgages are tightly regulated at both the federal and state levels, not to…

Read More

What Bond Liability Means For Your Retirement Plan

By McLean Asset Management

Bond prices are sensitive to interest rate changes, and bond duration is a measure of just how sensitive. For instance, if a increase in interest rates from 2% to 3% caused a bond’s price to fall by 8.5%, the bond would have a duration of 8.5, meaning that a 1% rise in interest rates leads to an…

Read More

How To Make Sense Of Bond Pricing

By McLean Asset Management

As a bond provides a contractual right to a series of future payments received at specified points of time, the price for a bond is simply the present discounted value of the future cash flows. The face value of a bond will be repaid at maturity. A zero-coupon bond provides only a bond’s face value,…

Read More

Your Retirement Number Is Meaningless

By McLean Asset Management

A lot of ad money has been spent trying to make people worry about their “retirement number.” It’s pretty brilliant marketing, actually. Retirement is this big unknown for so many folks, if someone offers to nail it down to a concrete number, of course people will line up. The only problem is, it’s meaningless. It’s…

Read More

Review: Markets Are Right More Often Than You Think

By McLean Asset Management

This article let’s me get on my soapbox about one of my favorite topics: markets don’t need to be right to be efficient. Oftentimes, people equate market efficiency with “right” or “perfect” market prices. That’s simply not true, and in fact, it doesn’t even mean anything. The folks who are advancing these arguments are either misinformed or…

Read More

Review: Legendary investor Jack Bogle’s advice for Trump: 7 reforms investors need now

By McLean Asset Management

Jack Bogle has done more for investors than almost anyone. He popularized passive investing, and founded Vanguard. Everything he has done hasn’t happened by accident. When he talks about the financial services industry people should listen, and think carefully about what he says. He isn’t always right about everything, but he knows what he’s talking…

Read More

Blog posts linked on this page are intended for convenience, educational, and informational purposes only. All expressions of opinion reflect the judgment of the authors as of the date of publication and are subject to change. The adviser does not endeavor to update or remove blog posts and articles after initial publication. No linked content should be construed as individualized advice or recommendations, and the discussions contained are not a substitute for investment advice from a professional adviser. This commentary should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed.