Recently MetLife published an excerpt from their annual study on Employee Benefits Trends titled Remodeling the Benefits and Retirement Income Space. It is a well written piece and we would be glad to send you the entire report. I used the report to base my comments below on the importance of financial wellness to overall good health.   Is there a linkage between stress and financial wellness? If so, is it important? Stress is associated with numerous health issues...  Read more...

As I have noted in the past, one investment strategy that seems to garner press attention from time to time is the "Dogs of the Dow" investment strategy. The strategy consists of selecting the ten stocks that have the highest dividend yield from the stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJIA) after the close of business on the last trading day of the year. Once the ten stocks are determined, an investor would invest an equal dollar amount in each of the ten stocks and hold them for a year.T...  Read more...

I am taken with the fact that we will, as a population, live a long time due to excellent and ever improving health care but we are not recognizing the issues that arise to support a long and dynamic life. At best, if one needs to live a long life one would like to live it well which means not only being healthy, but also having the financial means to enjoy life with good health. As my mother says, “it is great to always visit my grandchildren and bring a gift but the best gift I can g...  Read more...

The American System of Retirement could always be diagramed as a three legged stool. In other words if you were going to sit out your retirement years you could depend on a three legged stool to support you. Text books even diagramed this perspective and went to great lengths to outline how it looked and how it worked. The first leg or support system was the Federal Government program of Social Security. The system was originally designed to provide a replacement income of 40% to the average...  Read more...

With the recent sell off in the equity markets that began in mid July, one would suspect cash balances would be elevated. As the below chart notes, cash balances as a percentage of all mutual fund assets is near record lows though. Historically, low levels of money market cash have been associated with equity market tops.From The Blog of HORAN Capital AdvisorsOn the other hand given the meager interest rates paid on deposits investors might be going elsewhere with their cash. From a strategy per...  Read more...

Today HORAN Associates, HORAN Capital Advisors' business partner, launched a blog focusing on industry trends and data related to health care and wealth management. The blog, HORAN Health.Wealth.Life, will focus on articles written by HORAN Associates' CEO, Terry Horan, CLU, ChFC, and will focus on two of the greatest challenges Americans are facing today:access to quality, affordable health care; andsecuring professional counsel to build and sustain wealth for a lifetimeAs Terry notes, readers...  Read more...

In 2010 we rebranded the company and now use the tag, Health, Wealth, Life. Why? Because it positions us to say and take advantage of the things we do at HORAN.  Today, I ground this line in the philosophy of why we are doing what we do. We provide consulting and services to a large number of regional employers and their employees. These products include Group Health Insurance, Long Term Disability, Life Insurance and products and services to help employers and employees sa...  Read more...

In today's release of the unemployment rate, there really isn't much positive data contained in the report. The unemployment rate remains at 9.1% with the non-farm payroll report showing no increase versus expectations of +75,000 increase. The broader measure of labor force utilization is known as the U-6. This measure shows the unemployment/underemployment rate increased to 16.2%. The U-6 measure is one that captures marginally attached workers which are individuals not looking for work althoug...  Read more...

The sentiment readings released so far this month continue to be reported at levels weaker than those associated with stronger economic growth. The IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index is reported near the beginning of each month. In August, the TIPP Economic Optimism Index declined by 5.6 percentage points to a historic low of 35.8 vs. 41.4 in July. The index is 8.6 points below its reading of 44.4 in December 2007 when the economy entered into its last recession. Index readings above 50 indicat...  Read more...

Once again the equity put/call ratio moved above 1.0 at the close on Friday, reaching 1.04. The equity P/C ratio tends to measure the sentiment of the individual investor by dividing put volume by call volume. At the extremes, this particular measure is a contrarian one; hence, P/C ratios above 1.0 signal overly bearish sentiment from the individual investor. This indicator's average over the last 5-years is approximately .7, indicating the individual investor has been generally mostly bullish a...  Read more...