By Fred Taylor
November 16, 2020 – “The good news is there has never been a better time in history to get the money to make some home improvements. The Federal Reserve has continued to keep short-term interest rates low, making it more attractive to borrow money.”
By Lynne Winter
Nov. 3, 2020 -“My partners and I asked ourselves what we could do to make a significant difference in our community,” Taylor said. “We wanted to contribute by funding a scholarship, and where better to make a lasting impact than at MSU Denver?”
By Charlie Farrell
Nov. 1, 2020 – “These days, it’s probably more important to understand what the government is doing in markets and where they want investors to go, as opposed to how companies are doing. Now, both are important, but government support is more important right now.”
By Fred Taylor
Oct. 16, 2020 -“Investors typically buy gold as a hedge to inflation, political unrest or market volatility. We certainly have election uncertainty and stock market turbulence in 2020 but the biggest factor influencing gold prices long term is inflation. We experienced this back in the 1970s when there was a lot of inflation and gold was a great asset to own.“
By Charlie Farrell
Oct. 4, 2020 -“It’s likely interest rates will be “zero bound” for at least the next three to four years, and probably longer. This presents some tough choices for retired investors: take more risk or live on less.”
September 18, 2020 -“Northstar is led by an experienced team of Colorado financial advisors that understand the risk and return parameters of the financial markets and can offer prudent and careful guidance to help clients protect and grow their wealth.”
By Fred Taylor
Sept. 11, 2020 -“As we say in the investment business, it is not timing the market that makes you a successful investor but time in the market that does. The same can be said about investing in a 529 plan.”
By Charlie Farrell
September 6, 2020 -“Right now, the market does not need the economy, corporate profits or dividends to grow. It’s going up despite all those things getting worse. It seems to only need one thing, and that is massive support from the Federal Reserve.”
By Fred Taylor
August 20, 2020 -“Universally, our employees said that the silver lining of the pandemic has been working from home, which has made them more productive professionally and personally. Not surprisingly, all reported liking their jobs more since moving to a work from home arrangement.”
By Charlie Farrell
August 2, 2020 -“If you believe the nation will recover from the virus and the economy will get back to normal, then there is no reason for stock prices to fall. A rational investor will look through the bad current numbers to better numbers down the road.”
July 23, 2020 – In honor of its 25th anniversary, Northstar Investment Advisors has established a scholarship at Metropolitan State University of Denver. The firm will provide $25,000 over the next five years to support students studying finance at the urban institution.
By Fred Taylor
July 9, 2020 – With interest rates at record lows, there is absolutely no reason to be paying high interest rates on credit card debt. You should pay off these charges immediately, even if it means borrowing money from a line of credit or home equity line.
By Charlie Farrell
July 5, 2020 – Let’s say the odds right now are roughly 50/50 that we’ll get a medical solution within a year to 18 months. Then you might want to consider having 50% of your money in diversified stocks and the other 50% in the safer assets.
By Charlie Farrell
June 14, 2020 – “A good way to think about it is investing is when you make bets when the odds are in your favor and gambling is when you make bets when the odds are not in your favor. So to figure out if you are gambling or investing, you have to know the odds of what you are doing.”
By Monica Vendituoli
June 4, 2020 -“When the market drops 35% in two weeks, that’s scary,” Taylor said. “It’s pretty nice to be able to call your investment adviser up — and you’re just not going to get that from a robo-adviser.”
By Fred Taylor
June 4, 2020 – Once the markets began to react rapidly to the pandemic and the total shutdown of the U.S economy was inevitable, it was clear we had to shift our strategy. While investment decisions can sometimes be debated for months, we knew the situation required us to move quickly and communicate changes to staff as clearly as possible.
By Charlie Farrell
May 3, 2020 – “To get a sense of how much you can withdraw, you have to make some estimates of future returns for stocks, bonds and inflation. Those are the three big inputs that will determine your lifestyle in retirement.”
By Fred Taylor
April 28, 2020 -Currently, investors believe Federal Reserve intervention is working because the stock market has stabilized and is now at the higher end of a recent trading range. However, it is hard to believe the worst is over for the markets, considering the millions of unemployed Americans, no earnings guidance from U.S. companies for the foreseeable future and a massive drop in oil prices.
By Monica Vendituoli
April 16, 2020 – Northstar Investment Advisors’ employees have worked every weekend since March to connect with clients about their concerns. Each client has come to the firm with different worries based on their circumstances, but Taylor said all of the firm’s clients are fearful for their finances due to the pandemic.
“It’s financial triage,” Taylor said.
By Fred Taylor
April 7, 2020 -With many businesses shut down and millions out of work, market volatility is likely to remain high as investors struggle to determine which companies will survive the recession and bear market. Until a vaccine is ready, uncertainty will reign.
By Charlie Farrell
April 5, 2020 -“If you are retired, you’ve got to avoid taking distributions from stocks while they are down. Moreover, at the start of any crisis, you should plan on not taking money from the stock part of your portfolio for at least three to five years.”
By Glenn Ruffenach
April 2, 2020 –
Faced with the unknowns, it isn’t rational to be all in cash (like my friend) or all in stocks. “The best you can do is place bets for both scenarios right now,” says Charlie Farrell, chief executive officer of Northstar Investment Advisors, Denver. At the moment, “no one has accurate data on which to base a decision. So if you don’t know, and you can’t know, why would you make one big bet about the future?”
By Aldo Svaldi
April 1, 2020 –
“The first quarter of 2020 was historic and terrifying,” said Fred Taylor, president of Northstar Investment Advisors in Denver. “A medical pandemic caused a financial pandemic at the exact same time oil prices collapsed to $20 a barrel.”
By Gail MarksJarvis
March 13, 2020 – If a retiree won’t be able to pay near-term expenses without tapping stocks during a bear market, Charles Farrell, chief executive of Northstar Investment Advisors in Denver, said he would suggest a retiree reduce spending rather than selling stocks.
By Monica Vendituoli
March 6, 2020 -Much of FirstBank’s success after the Great Recession had to do with the fact that the bank did not issue subprime loans to homebuyers in the early 2000s unlike their competitors, said Fred Taylor, co-founder and president of Denver-based registered investment advisor firm Northstar Investment Advisors, which is the 17th-largest investment manager in Colorado.
By Fred Taylor
March 2, 2020 – “I suspect the markets will be on edge and remain very volatile until the number of cases stabilize or a vaccine goes into production. Something so unknown can be extremely difficult to stomach as an investor, especially with the scary headlines.”
By Charlie Farrell
March 1, 2020 – “The days of combing through volumes of obscure financial research on companies nobody ever heard of and finding a diamond in the rough are mostly gone. That’s the main reason why value investing is not working as well.”
By Charlie Farrell
February 2, 2020 – “While stocks will remain risky and you must plan for declines regardless of valuations, stocks have always recovered from declines, and it’s a good bet that any crash we see in the future will be followed by a recovery.”
By Fred Taylor
January 28, 2020 – “It’s my belief that having a personal connection to a nonprofit creates a passion and deeper loyalty for the organization’s mission.”
By Charlie Farrell
January 5, 2020 – “In a nutshell, what the past 20 years can teach us about dealing with the next 20 years is that you should stay committed through all market cycles, stay fundamentally balanced between stocks and bonds, and save more.”
By Aldo Svaldi
January 1, 2020 – “What is most extraordinary about this year is where the markets were just 12 months ago,” said Fred Taylor, president of Northstar Investment Advisors in Denver. “On Christmas Eve 2018, the markets were down 20 percent due to fears of higher interest rates and a pending recession.”
By Fred Taylor
Dec. 17, 2019—”Certainly, the trade war, impeachment proceedings, corporate earnings, interest rates and oil prices will be the near-term concerns for investors in the first half of next year. The presidential election will start to become a bigger factor as we get towards summer and certainly in the fall of 2020.”
By Glenn Ruffenach
Dec. 5, 2019—”Low interest rates make it hard to ‘have your cake and eat it too,’ “ says Charlie Farrell, chief executive of Northstar Investment Advisors in Denver. “If retired investors want to try to maintain and build wealth, then they’ll need to take more risk, which means more in equity-type investments.”
By Charlie Farrell
Dec. 4, 2019—”The reality is there is no one way to assess the status of a bull market. As I heard someone say recently “if you torture the data enough, it will give you the answer you want.” The real question today is not the technical status of the bull market, but “are stocks a good value compared to what else you can invest in?”
By Fred Taylor
Nov. 14, 2019—”For one, there is no free lunch. While trading commissions have been basically eliminated, brokerage firms will make up the difference in several other ways. For example, it may cost clients more to keep their money on the sidelines at some of these firms.”
By Charlie Farrell
Nov. 3, 2019—”The first thing to do is figure out what your base income needs are in retirement. By that, I mean what’s the smallest amount of income you need each month to stay afloat. Most people do not know this number, and knowing it will give you a lot more control over your finances.”
Oct. 6, 2019—”A good rule of thumb is that if you have multiple funds or ETFs, and one of them has moved by more than 25% off your target, you may want to consider a rebalance. For example, if you have a target of 10% for a specific stock ETF, and it is now at 13% of your portfolio (30% more than your target), you may want to bring it back in line.”
Oct. 1, 2019—”Stocks have been climbing a steep wall of endless worry,” said Fred Taylor, president of Northstar Investment Advisors, a Denver money management firm.” But investors were buoyed by two Federal Reserve interest rate cuts, low unemployment and the ability of American consumers to keep spending, Taylor said.
By Glenn Ruffenach
September 6, 2019 —“Still, as we have mentioned many times in this column, the best investment plans are those that allow you to sleep soundly at night. With that in mind, “if a single account really bothers an investor, there is nothing wrong with having another account at a large custodian,” said Charlie Farrell, CEO of Northstar Investment Advisors. “It’s just a little more of a hassle.”
September 3, 2019—”Northstar Investment Advisors LLC was recognized in Advisory HQ’s 2019 Ranking of the Top-Rated Wealth Advisors in Colorado. The firm received a 5-star rating and was one of 13 firms included in the listing, which is designed to provide objective, comprehensive research to help everyday consumers make informed financial decisions.”
By Fred Taylor
August 13, 2019 —“There seems to be game of chicken going on between Chairman Powell and President Donald Trump. The president has made it widely known to the world that he thinks America’s short-term interest rates should be considerably lower than they are today to keep the economy strong and the stock market high.”
Road to Retirement: Looking for Investment Income, Beware of Income Traps
Sept. 1, 2019—”What’s important to understand is that once you get into higher-yielding fixed income securities, you start losing degrees of safety and principal protection, which is what may have initially attracted you to fixed income.”
By Charlie Farrell
August 4, 2019 —“The bottom line is that determining which benefit is best all depends on when you die because that’s when the payments stop. And since you don’t know when that will be, it’s basically impossible to figure out whether taking it early or late will result in a higher total payment to you.”
July 19, 2019—Fred Taylor, President & Co-Founder of Northstar Investment Advisors, LLC in Denver, has been announced as one of three national finalists for the Lifetime Achievement Award as part of the 13thAnnual Invest in Others Awards.”
By Charlie Farrell
July 7, 2019 —“If your income tax rate at the time you contribute money is the same as the income tax rate when you distribute the money, it does not matter which one you use. You will end up with the same amount of money.”
By Glenn Ruffenach
June 6, 2019—“But the greater risk to your nest egg, says Charlie Farrell, chief executive officer of Northstar Investment Advisors in Denver, is the possibility that you could be one of the unlucky ones, a person who needs, say, five years or more of care—and whose spouse needs a long period of care, as well.”
By Charlie Farrell
June 5, 2019 —“While every family has different values around supporting adult children, if the support is restricting your ability to adequately save and prepare for your own retirement, then supporting your adult kids is a problem.”
By Charlie Farrell
May 5, 2019—“Many retired investors have been waiting for interest rates to rise so they can enhance their income. But as the saying goes, you might be waiting until the cows come home.”
May 1, 2019 —Northstar President and Co-Founder Fred Taylor has been elected chairman of the Children’s Hospital Colorado Foundation’s Board of Trustees. Taylor formerly served as vice-chair and treasurer of the Foundation’s Board. He will serve a two-year term.
By Monica Vendituoli
April 22, 2019—“There are no finite rules as to what qualifies as a ‘green’ company to invest in,” said Fred Taylor in an email.
by Fred Taylor
April 16, 2019 — “Luke Perry’s sudden death from a stroke at just 52 should make us all realize that the death of a spouse can happen out of the blue. Are you prepared? Failing to tackle these important topics can have serious ramifications. “
By Charlie Farrell
April 7, 2019—“The main point I want to make is that while the market will continue to shi from periods of grand optimism to severe pessimism, the more accurate narrative is the “optimistic” one, not the pessimistic one.”
by Charlie Farrell
March 3, 2019 — “One primary strategy to reducing taxes in retirement is to think about what sort of assets you keep in your IRA accounts. In a nutshell, if you can keep your slower growing, ordinary income assets in your IRA, you are likely to reduce your overall tax burden in retirement.“
By Fred Taylor
February 13, 2019—“The reality is there are plenty of companies to invest in and if you don’t like the management of the companies, what they do to the environment or their products, don’t buy their shares.”
by Charlie Farrell
February 3, 2019 — “But one thing to remember about index investing is that while it is an efficient way of investing, it doesn’t mean it’s rational or less risky than other methods. When the stock market goes haywire, either on the way up or on the way down, you are along for the same ride.”
Financial Tips for 2019
By Fred Taylor
January 17, 2019—“The first two things you should look at doing are paying off high interest rate credit card debt and high-interest rate student loan debt. This kind of debt is brutal simply because it typically costs you a lot more than home mortgage debt.”
by Charlie Farrell
January 6, 2019 — “If you are concentrated in just a few companies, then you could own the ones that don’t recover, and there generally are some that don’t in any bear market. Thus, it’s important to be fundamentally diversified.”
By Aldo Svaldi
January 1, 2019—“Investors will remember 2018 for incredible volatility and big losses,” said Fred Taylor, president of Northstar Investment Advisors in Denver. “Diversification simply didn’t work. Every major asset class lost money: stocks, bonds, commodities, bitcoin, hedge funds and gold.”
by Monica Vendituoli
December 13, 2018 — “There is definitely a race to the bottom in terms of fees with passive investing,” said Fred Taylor, president of Northstar Investment Advisors. “Vanguard, Schwab and Fidelity continue to cut the fees on their index and exchange-traded fund products. On a few funds Fidelity doesn’t charge any fees.”
By Aldo Svaldi
December 5, 2018—”If you have $1 million, you should be able to distribute $40,000 per year adjusted for inflation,” said Charlie Farrell, CEO of Northstar Investment Advisors in Denver.”
by Charlie Farrell
December 2, 2018 — “Let’s say you spend $1,500 on holiday gifts each year, and you did this for 35 years, basically from age 30 to 65. Now what if you had actually invested that money and earned 7.5 percent in your 401(k)? It would be worth around $250,000. That’s real money, so what you spend on the holidays does have an impact on your financial security.”
By Northstar Staff
November 30, 2018—Bob Van Wetter, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Northstar Investment Advisors, LLC, was elected to the board of directors of the Lutheran Medical Center Foundation.
by Charlie Farrell
October 7, 2018 — “The problem in today’s global markets is that you can’t build wealth by being conservative. To my knowledge, there are currently no safe investments that will allow you to outpace the impact of inflation and taxes. So if you allocate too much of your money to conservative investments, it’s likely you won’t reach your long-term goals.”
By Fred Taylor
November 1, 2018—”For consumers who have financed their homes with adjustable rate mortgages – now is the time to reconsider that strategy. If you haven’t locked in a fixed interest rate for 15 or 30 years, it is time to consider doing that.”