In The News
Northstar is frequently featured in business and investing articles in national and local leading publications.
Fed Minutes: Economy Operating at Lower Potential Than Previously Thought
Investment Advisor.com; August 31, 2010
"Bottom line, the committee is walking a fine line between appearing desperate and appearing reassuring. With so much uncertainty, no one wants to invest before the November election."
--Fred Taylor
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Housing: Don't Confuse An Expense With An Investment
CBS moneywatch.com; August 30, 2010
"In my opinion, treating a house as an investment is the biggest mistake most people make in personal finance."
--Charles Farrell
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Hard Times Investing: Shareholders Count on Dividends More Than Ever
CNBC; August 9, 2010
"There has never been a better time to buy US large-cap, dividend-paying stocks. For the first time since 1958, you can get more in dividend income—more than 3 percent—from great companies than from the ten-year U.S. Treasury note, which is now yielding less than 3 percent."
--Fred Taylor
Northstar Rolls Out Benchmark Index for Retirement Income
July 15, 2010
The FNRI Index is comprised of securities selected by the Northstar investment management team and combined in such a fashion as to provide 1) Current and Stable Income, 2) Growing Income, 3 Principal Protection, and 4) Capital Gains.
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Eight investment professionals offer insights into U.S. economy, oil spill and buying gold
Denver Business Journal; July 2, 2010
"If the economy stays flat to slightly positive, the best stocks to buy would be dividend-paying stocks within the most defensive sectors. Consumer staples, health care and technology stocks will outperform because these companies pay generous dividends, have little or no debt, and a lot of cash on their books. However, if the economy picks up steam in the second half of 2010, consumer discretionary, industrial and materials stocks would be a better investment."
--Fred Taylor
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Four Simple Ways You Can Boost Your Nest Egg
The Wall Street Journal; June 20, 2010
"If you're willing to downsize (your home), it can make a big difference in your retirement."
--Charles Farrell
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Future of Stocks
Channel 9NEWS; June 8, 2010
"Consumer staples is probably the strongest industry right now. Those companies will do well in a recession with their low debt to cap ratio and a history of increasing their dividends every year. That's what you have to look at."
--Fred Taylor
It's All About Retirement Income
AdvisorBiz.com; June 2, 2010
"We (Northstar) started thinking about ways you could design a new index for people who were interested in four things: current income; stable income; growing income and long term capital gains. Those are the four primary objectives of the index (FNRI) so we select securities designed to meet those objectives as opposed to the S&P 500 just selects 500 large companies. That doesn't really help you on the income side, it doesn't help you on the principal stability side, so it's about getting investors to think differently about how they're managing money when they move into a phase of their life when they need real results, not relative results."
--Charles Farrell
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Inflation vs. the Bear: Which is worse for retired investors?
Investment News; May 30, 2010
"While it seems like a bear market would pose the biggest risk to retired investors, inflation is the real danger."
--Charles Farrell
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Wary Analysts Watch Gold's Climb as Investors Flock to Safety
Investment Advisor; May 28, 2010
"People are using gold as a cheap hedge against sovereign debt uncertainty. We still don't know what will happen with the euro or the entire ECB for that matter. It depends on the flight to safety and on the reason your clients are buying gold. Gold and money markets are returning about the same, so if they're buying it for insurance and as part of a larger asset allocation strategy, it might not be a bad idea. If the markets drop another 2,000 points, they've won. If the opposite happens and the market rallies, who cares? They've still got the hard asset. But if you're buying gold strictly on the hope the price will rise, that's a very dangerous way to invest."
--Fred Taylor
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Adviser-to-Adviser: Practical Applications of Annuities in Retirement Income Portfolios
InvestmentNews 2010 Retirement Income Summit; May 3, 2010
Charlie was a featured speaker at the InvestmentNews 2010 Retirement Income Summit. As a panelist for this discussion, Charlie and two other top advisors review lifetime income solutions.
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Wealth advisers offer market insights
Denver Business Journal; April 16, 2010
"The biggest investor mistake has already occurred. Too many Americans over the past three years have sold their stock funds and put all of their money in long-duration bond funds. Once interest rates rise, these same investors who bailed out of the stock market in 2008 and 2009 will see massive losses in their bond funds."
--Fred Taylor
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Northstar, Farrell create new retirement index
Denver Business Journal; February 26, 2010
"If your objective is just to track the long-term appreciation of the total stock market, the S&P 500 is a good benchmark for that,” Farrell said. “But if you’re interested in actually living off of your money, getting some return that you can spend every year, and having some defense built into your account — that index really isn’t built to do that."
--Charles Farrell
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Financial planners keep an eye on Washington
Denver Business Journal; February 12, 2010
"I would say that everything’s off the table at this point. Health care, cap and trade, anything that was on the Obama agenda I don’t think gets done at this point until you see that the Republicans want to work with him. And based on the partisanship in Congress, I just don’t see it now. I think the Republicans are smelling blood and they’re going to take a lot of the elections in November, so it doesn’t behoove them to work with the president if they want to take control of Congress."
--Fred Taylor
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New benchmarks for retirement income management
Investment News; January 26, 2010
"With retirement income management becoming the primary objective of many investors, it's time for new investment benchmarks which reflect that. For decades, investors have been using the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average as defaults for investment performance. But constructing portfolios that track those benchmarks is of little value for investors who must live off the returns on their portfolios...We have elected to address this issue by creating the Farrell-Northstar Retirement Income Index (FNRI Index), which is an index that tracks securities that provide opportunities for meaningful current income, growing income, principal stability and long term capital gains."
--Charles Farrell
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Colorado stocks enjoyed big rebound in 2009
Denver Post; January 1, 2010
"Everything that didn't work in 2008 worked really well in 2009. In the beginning of 2009, the markets were reflecting a second depression, but once it was taken off the table by the stimulus plan and investors willing to take on risk, there was a rally. As we head into 2010, the biggest worries are about all the debt the government will have to sell in 2010, who's going to buy it and what is it going to do to long-term interest rates. Then there's the question of what's going to happen with commercial real estate and how that will impact regional banks."
--Fred Taylor
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Economists issue predictions for 2010
Denver Business Journal; January 1, 2010
"There really is no single indicator to watch to determine whether to invest in the stock market or not. There are several that are important. The most obvious ones are: the Fed Funds interest rate; the unemployment number; the prices of gold, oil, and copper; monthly GDP and CPI reports; the strength of corporate earnings; investor sentiment surveys; the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond rate; and the leading economic indicators coming out of China-India-Brazil. On any given day, these various indicators can move the stock and bond markets here and around the globe. We are truly living in a flat world, and events like 9-11 or the recent Dubai debt crisis can roil markets everywhere in a nanosecond."
--Fred Taylor
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Can These Retirements Be Saved?
The Wall Street Journal; December 19, 2009
"Mr. Farrell recommends paying off any mortgage before they retire to make it easier to live off their investments later on."
--Kelly Greene
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The Best In...
The Wall Street Journal; December 19, 2009
"Charles Farrell, an investment adviser in Denver, has long written about financial planning. In particular, he has developed, in recent years, some of the smartest tools we've seen for gauging the health of your nest egg. Now, he has combined these calculators with additional guidelines in a new book, "Your Money Ratios: Eight Simple Tools for Financial Security." Mr. Farrell uses easy-to-understand ratios to help individuals manage savings, debt, investments and insurance, all with the goal of achieving a secure retirement. In short, one of the best financial books to cross our desks this year."
--Charles Farrell
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Get your 401(k) above pre-crash levels
Fortune Magazine; December 9, 2009
"Most investors should keep no more than 40%-50% of their portfolios in stocks at retirement."
--Charles Farrell
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Advisers contemplate facing inflation issues
Denver Business Journal; December 4-10, 2009
"The way to play gold is through the exchange-traded funds [that track the price of gold]. The problem with gold stocks is that a lot of gold mining companies hedge their positions, and they're notoriously bad hedgers, so they end up losing a ton of money on the hedge even though the price of the commodity goes up. And they don't pay dividends, typically."
--Fred Taylor
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The Question of Measuring Financial Progress
Yahoo! Finance; November 18, 2009
"Farrell says a focus on net worth can distract from the primary goal in personal finance, 'to create a pool of assets from which you can generate income for your retirement years,' he says. 'So whatever supports that goal can go into your net worth, whatever doesn't really should be looked at differently.' . . . Farrell attempts to address those issues in his new book, 'Your Money Ratios: 8 Simple Tools For Financial Security,' which will be published in December by the Penguin Group."
--Laura Rowley, writing for Yahoo! Finance
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Do we still need ERISA?
Investment News; October 15, 2009
"With the technological advancements in money management platforms and payroll systems, one has to wonder whether the costs associated with ERISA compliance could be removed from the retirement plan system. If we could safely remove those costs, it's likely we could help employees accumulate between 20% and 30% more money for retirement. So it's worth considering."
--Charlie Farrell
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Staying the course in rough waters
Fidelity.com; October 8, 2009
"Everybody who panicked and sold before the March 9 low in the market is regretting that mistake today. They locked in their losses...every day the market marches higher is killing them."
--Fred Taylor
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Put Your Cash to Work: Bonds
SmartMoney.com; August 17, 2009
"Charles Farrell of Northstar Investment Advisors recommends that clients with a sizable allocation to fixed income buy bonds individually and hold them to maturity to shield themselves from fluctuations in prices. He adds that investors relying on their bond portfolio for income would do well to ladder their bonds—staggering the investments so a portion of the bond portfolio matures every year."
--SmartMoney.com
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California bonds: What next?
Fidelity.com; July 29, 2009
"For diversification, munis make a lot of sense. In the highest tax brackets, municipal bonds offer higher interest rates on an after-tax basis than U.S. Treasury bonds."
--Fred Taylor
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Is it too late to sell?
Rocky Mountain News; February 24, 2009
"If your time horizon is shorter that five years and your money is invested in nonretirement accounts, then you need to play it safe. No one knows how bad the economy will get or how low the stock markets will go. One has to remember that the US stock market fell 90 percent during the Depression and the Japanese stock market is still down 80 percent from the highs. If at some point within five years you need money to fund college tuition, meet payroll, refinance a mortgage or buy a home, then you cannot afford to take the risk that the Dow doesn't drop to 5,000."
--Fred Taylor
Bleakest economic year in decades
Rocky Mountain News; December 31, 2008
"With the stock market facing tremendous head winds to start 2009, I wouldn't be surprised to see negative returns through the first two quarters of 2009. But if the Obama stimulus plan creates more jobs than expected and investor psychology improves by anticipating a better 2010, we could actually see a rally the last two months of 2009 and end the year positive."
--Fred Taylor
Business reacts to the election
Denver Business Journal; November 7, 2008
"Obama has to instill confidence in the markets by being, first and foremost, bipartisan and inspirational. It's critical who he picks to be Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State, because that's going to be key to our economic policy going forward. Certainly the rest of the world is very excited by the Obama win, and I think that's a positive for this country. I think our dollar will strengthen, which will keep interest rates low, which will keep commodity prices low. In the short term, the obvious sectors that are going to get hurt are the big pharmaceuticals, managed healthcare, coal-based utilities, the large energy companies, the integrated oil companies. The winners, I assume, would be nursing homes, biotechnology, natural gas, certainly anything to do with alternative energy. The biggest short-term winner, of course, is the tax-exempt bonds, if Obama follows through on his promise of raising taxes on the people who make more than $250,000 a year. They're still trading at 80 to 120 basis points cheaper than US Treasuries, and they're tax-free."
--Fred Taylor
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Taking stock of the next president
Denver Post; October 31, 2008
"Tax-exempt municipal bonds, which have fallen sharply in value in recent weeks, could benefit as higher-income households seek to shelter income from higher taxes likely under Obama's plan."
--Fred Taylor