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Due Diligence
By Christopher Carosa, CTFA | December 7, 2010
Isn’t it ironic that the very people who 401k plans were created to benefit have decided it’s easier to ignore the maze than to constructively participate. Allowing the 401k to evolve up to today’s technology will solve many problems.
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Posted in Opinion | Tagged 401k, Compliance, Due Diligence, fee, fiduciary, liability, target date fund
By Christopher Carosa, CTFA | August 23, 2010
The current economic setting only heightens fiduciary liability. Last year, the DOL logged more than 4.5 corrected violations per business day. With aggressive litigators using technology to sniff out these violators and others, what’s a 401k plan sponsor to do?
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Posted in Compliance | Tagged 401k, Compliance, Conflicts of Interest, Due Diligence, Fees, fiduciary, Fiduciary Solutions, investment, liability, litigation
By Christopher Carosa, CTFA | March 3, 2010
$16.5 million is a large price to pay for disclosure and due diligence a plan fiduciary can simply and consistently address. This may be the easiest action a 401k plan fiduciary to take to prevent the camel from sticking his nose under the tent.
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Posted in Fees | Tagged 401k, Catepillar, disclosure, Due Diligence, Fees
By Christopher Carosa, CTFA | January 5, 2010
Awful returns suggest investors should have shunned equities during the century’s first decade. Or do they? A closer examination reveals a surprising conclusion, one that might upset the fastest growing segment of the financial industry.
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Posted in Due Diligence | Tagged 401k, active, behavior, behavioral economics, behavioral finance, Dow, Dow Jones, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Due Diligence, fiduciary, Index, Index Funds, liability, Lipper, Lost Decade, Mutual Fund Survivorship, NASDAQ, passive, passive-active, recency, S&P 500, Snapshot-In-Time Anomaly, Standard & Poor's 500, Standard and Poor's 500, survivor bias, The Emperor Exposed, The Lost Decade, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, USAToday, Wall Street Journal
By Christopher Carosa, CTFA | November 10, 2009
Plan sponsors want a more robust way to analyze. This technique may have saved 401k investors significantly last year.
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Posted in Due Diligence | Tagged 401k, Alfred, behavior, BrightScope, BrightScope On Target Index, conflict of interest, Conflicts of Interest, Congress, DOL, Due Diligence, fiduciary, Fred Reish, fund adviser, government, Health Care, Hutcheson, independence, independent, liability, Matt Hutcheson, Mike Alfred, On Target Index, participant, Plan sponor, Reish, target date, Target Date Analytics, target date fund, through-index, to-index, Washington DC
By Christopher Carosa, CTFA | November 3, 2009
The wildness of the equity markets and the uncertainty of our economic environment appears to be opening the eyes of the typical fiduciary to more exotic investments. The practical implication may mean greater potential liability.
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Posted in Due Diligence | Tagged 24 hour trading, Anthony Welch, Art of Indexing, Australian currency, bond market, bonds, commodities, commodity, correlation, currencies, currency, day trading, depression, discount, Due Diligence, emerging market, equity market, ERISA, ETF, European, fiduciary, fixed-income, G-10, global market, Great Depression, Ian Naismith, leverage, leveraged, liability, liquid, liquidity, long/short, long/short pair, low correlation, Naismith, no credit risk, premium, Price volatility, real estate, Sarasota Capital Strategies, Stocks, thinly traded, US Dollar, US Equity, volatility, Welch, world's largest asset class
By Christopher Carosa, CTFA | October 28, 2009
The active investing vs. passive investing argument has become passé. Perhaps we may be nearing a new consensus where it’s no longer active OR passive, but active AND passive.
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Posted in Due Diligence | Tagged 401k, active, behavioral economics, Due Diligence, Globe and Mail, growth, Index Funds, Investment News, liability, passive, recency, Snapshot-In-Time Anomaly, The Wall Street Journal, value, Vanguard
By Christopher Carosa, CTFA | October 21, 2009
Investors have decided to flee two asset classes: stocks, perhaps because of their dramatic gains in the last six months; and cash, perhaps because of historically low interest rates. In either case, investors have signaled their lack of confidence in a near term recovery in the American economy.
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Posted in Due Diligence | Tagged bonds, Due Diligence, Hewitt Associates, ICI, mutual funds, participants, Pensions & Investments
By Christopher Carosa, CTFA | October 15, 2009
Unless and until we can break the momentum of intertwined conflicts-of-interest, the greatest legacy we’ll leave our grandchildren’s children may be an outstanding bill to pay for spiraling public employee retirement benefits.
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Posted in Opinion | Tagged 401k, Calpers, Compliance, Conflicts of Interest, Due Diligence, Education, ERISA, Fees, mutual funds, New York State Pension, New York Times, Pay to Play, Public Employee Pension Plan, Wall Street Journal
By Christopher Carosa, CTFA | October 14, 2009
Diversification does not protect the investor when the entire asset class sinks. A recent study from Hewitt Associates suggests events may be placing plan fiduciaries in a historically precarious position.
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Posted in Due Diligence | Tagged 401k, 404(c), bonds, Due Diligence, Education, Hewitt Associates, investment performance, investment policy statement, IPS, liability, mutual funds, participants, Stocks, Wall Street Journal
