Wealth Management

Voted #6 on Top 100 Family Business influencer on Wealth, Legacy, Finance and Investments: Jacoline Loewen My Amazon Authors' page Twitter:@ jacolineloewen Linkedin: Jacoline Loewen Profile

August 18, 2020

Billionaire Warren Buffett just turned 90—here are 6 pieces of wisdom from the investing legend

 Billionaire Warren Buffett just turned 90—here are 6 pieces of wisdom from the investing legend

  • Marry the right person. ...
  • Invest in yourself. ...
  • Associate yourself with 'high-grade people' ...
  • Work for people you respect. ...
  • Ignore the noise. ...
  • Success isn't measured by money.
Aug 31, 2019
Jacoline Loewen is a leader in the high performance wealth management arena. She has invested over 25+ years in entrepreneurship, finance and wealth management, having written several best seller books, including Money Magnet, (John Wiley) publisher).

August 17, 2020

The Hazards of Wealth

 If you are an entrepreneur and are smart about your wealth, you will be interested in Jacoline Loewen and her interviews in “Becoming Seriously Wealthy.” Jacoline shares conversations with entrepreneurs and stories of their financial journeys.  In this excerpt from her book, Jacoline explores the hazards of wealth.

Jacoline Loewen is a leader in the high performance wealth management arena. She has invested over 25+ years in entrepreneurship, finance and wealth management, having written several best seller books, including Money Magnet, (John Wiley) publisher).

Two weeks ago, I enjoyed a lunch with a former client at his private residence, looking across his sprawling lawn to the horse paddocks and fields. When I worked for a family office, I convinced this entrepreneur to partner with private equity. After six years, and much hard work, he succeeded in that entrepreneur dream where he sold his business and became wealthy beyond his financial goal set ten years back. 

I was curious how the sudden wealth had impacted his life and asked, “Now that you are a few years along from your sale, what is your big insight? We all think sudden wealth is wonderful but what are the risks? Do you think there are hazards to wealth?”

He laughed, “It's similar to winning the lottery.  It is wonderful and it is a shock to your life, your family, your friends and peer group. The question no one is going to ask you is ‘How are you going to replace this self esteem?’ You've been up Everest and back. Now what are you going to do for thrills and fun?”



My friend then commented, “Do you notice how many entrepreneurs buy an airplane? They have all this hunger for life, for adventure, and now that they have the money, buying a plane and learning to fly seems like a very good idea.”

The CAA reports that the most dangerous pilots statistically likely to have accidents or catastrophic incidents are those pilots with one hundred hours of experience, but less than five hundred. Jack McLeod, Skye Finance, who sold aircraft to entrepreneurs says, “Generally, this group gets bored with pre-flight checks and take short cuts to ‘show off’ to friends and family, feel nothing about flying inclement weather and are not too familiar with flying on instruments alone. Experience and hours are all important.”

My entrepreneur friend had been part of the Strategic Coach program run by Dan Sullivan which uses the Kolbe personality and skill assessment tool.  Apparently, the Kolbe test shows that it is common for entrepreneurs to be quick to start, but to not carry through with attention to rigorous and systematic detail.  He said, “Entrepreneurs learn how to fly initially, but soon skip through the tedious fifty-point check lists prior to flying and overlook the weather conditions. How many tragic tales do you know of entrepreneurs crashing their planes with loved ones on board? Remember the young Kennedy who crashed his plane at night, with his wife onboard?”

Thankfully, most entrepreneurs have been shown to be astute enough to recognize flying is not their skill set and to hire an experienced pilot. The entrepreneurs recognize that while they were talented at their skill set, flying and getting licensed takes time and attention they do not really want to dedicate.

Flying yourself, rather than hiring a pilot, is a terrible way to risk your future. It's misguided, risky and unfortunately, a common first foray into travel by former business owners.

The reality is risks, such as flying planes in poor weather, Black Swan events, pandemics and disasters are all out there. In the finance world, this risk is called beta . A beta of 1.00 is at the market level. If it's 1.5, it's approximately 50% more risky than the market. If it's 0.30 then it's 70% less risk.

When you run with entrepreneurs, risk is rarely mentioned. It's about returns. Winner takes all. Beta does not factor.

As you decide how to look after your wealth, you may want to be the person making all the calls. I have watched many entrepreneurs over the years. Don't fool yourself into believing you can call the risks. I would advice an entrepreneur with new wealth to ask if you want to spend your time checking on your money? Will your family be at risk if you are doing the decision making? What is the worst case scenario for your wealth? Above all, can you do a better job than the professionals with all of their time dedicated to understanding how to grow and keep wealth? Do you have their technology, their experience , their global view of the world, their ability to overcome country bias and the knowledge of beta which is harvested from overseeing your peers’ wealth?

Very much like the skills of the pilot , the skills of managing wealth are increasingly complex. Ensure you have the experts and, the world's best at wealth management .

 

Interested in risk-testing your portfolio? Please email me at jacoline.loewen@ubs.com

If you would like to read more of the series Becoming Seriously Wealthy, please email me at jacoline.loewen@ubs.com  

Twitter: @jacolineloewen

Praise for Money Magnet, J.B. Loewen

"Every ambitious private business owner should understand the role of investors and how to attract them. Money Magnet is an indispensible guide to the process."
Austen Beutel, Chairman and CEO, Oakwest Corporation Ltd.

April 8, 2020

Are we there yet?

A good question - Are we at the bottom?

Looking for the Bottom is a Holy Grail quest that will bamboozle investors without a long term strategic horizon.


Before the markets open today, just a word on market bottoms. 

Some of the most interesting questions in investing are especially appropriate today: “Since you expect more bad news and feel the markets may fall further, isn’t it premature to do any buying? Shouldn’t you wait for the bottom?”

To me, the answer is “no.” We never know when we’re at the bottom. We can pour over past stock charts, and there are a deep pit of these,  and we still will not know what will happen today in the markets. A bottom can only be recognized in retrospect: it was the day before the market started to go up. By definition, we can’t know today whether it’s been reached, since that’s a function of what will happen tomorrow. Thus, “I’m going to wait for the bottom” is an irrational statement.

If you want, you might choose to say, “I’m going to wait until the bottom has been passed and the market has started upward.” That’s more rational. However, number one, you’re saying you’re willing to miss the bottom. And number two, one of the reasons for a market to start to rise is that the sellers’ sense of urgency has abated, and along with it the selling pressure. 

That, in turn, means
 (a) the supply for sale shrinks and 
(b) the buyers’ very buying forces the market upward, as it’s now they who are highly motivated. 

These are the things that make markets rise. So if investors want to buy, they should buy on the way down. That’s when the sellers are feeling the most urgency and the buyers’ buying won’t arrest the downward cascade of security prices.

The old saying goes, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Likewise, waiting for the bottom can keep investors from making good purchases. The investor’s goal should be to make a large number of good buys, not just a few perfect ones. 


Follow on Twitter @JacolineLoewen

December 23, 2019

3 Tips to reduce your portfolio risk

How much do you think about the degree of risk in your portfolio? It's probably not enough. Here's how to think about risk and make portfolio adjustments to increase your odds of success? Here’s a good article on risk and your portfolio. 

If you have an investment adviser, you’ve probably been asked to rate your risk tolerance from one to 10. Or maybe you’ve been questioned about what your actions will be during the next market crash: Will you panic and sell or buy more? 
I don’t know many investors self-aware enough to admit they will indeed engage in panic selling. Likewise, most investors don’t sit around with a pile of cash waiting for a market crash — the last crash was in 2008, so those investors have been waiting a long time. Besides, what did you do during the depths of 2008? Regardless, you’re now 11 years older and in a different place. Evaluating risk tolerance with simple abstract questions is not useful. 
Risk is powerful, but most of us are more accustomed to thinking about returns. Of course returns matter. But we can’t judge our returns without understanding the risk we have taken. Unfortunately, most people don’t have the slightest understanding of risk.

To Test Yourself, Flip a Coin

Here’s my test to start thinking about risk. Imagine all of your money stacked in bills on the desk in front of you. Now you are now looking at the largest stack of bills you have ever seen. We will play a game to determine how your money does over the next 12 months. Your job is to choose between picking up one of two coins: a nickel and a quarter. 
If you choose the nickel, go ahead and flip it in the air. If it lands on heads you will be up 5%. However you will be down 5% if it lands on tails. 
The stakes change if you choose the quarter. If it lands on heads, you will be up an impressive 25%. And tails? Well, you’ll be down 25%. 
With all of your money on the line, which coin do you pick up? And more importantly, what does this tell us?
Read the rest here

August 31, 2019

Cash out of the market now?

Timing the market seems like a good idea but is difficult to execute. I have a close friend who was one of the few people in my network to successfully predict 2008–2009.
However, even during March 2009, the lows for markets at 7.300, he wanted to wait until `further falls`.
Then markets hit 10,000 in 2010. He thought it was a dead cat bounce.
By 2013 or so, he was even more worried. Markets were at 14,000. Record highs! Higher than during 2007–2008.
Surely this was a bubble! Then 16,000, then 18,000. But now Trump was running for election.
Then Trump won!
Surely, now markets would fall incredibly? Then markets hit new highs.
When markets fell 20% or so in December, he finally bought in, but suddenly the reality downed on him.
He got in at 21,000–22,000, a discount of 20%+ compared to where prices were a few months previously, and yes he has made 20%+ in the space of 6 months or so.
Yet he realized something. `I should just have invested from day 1`. He missed out on all those gains, and dividends.
People forget that point as well. Even stagnant markets, give dividends.