market volatility Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

Financial Advisor Do’s and Don’ts During Extreme Market Volatility

June 27, 2022 / by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom / 0 comments

Financial advisors play a vital role in helping clients achieve their most important financial goals. But where they really earn their fees is during times like these, when helping clients navigate the choppy waters of extreme market volatility. Clients look to their advisors to guide them through scary times and reassure them that everything will be okay.

Emotions run high when the market turns volatile. When stressed, humans instinctively want to do something and take some kind of action to reduce or eliminate the threat. That’s when mistakes typically occur. The value of a financial advisor rises in direct proportion to the anxiety levels of their clients, who look at volatile market swings as a threat to their financial security. The critical role of financial advisors is to keep their clients from making costly behavioral mistakes. During periods of extreme market volatility, there are some things advisors must do and things they should avoid doing to maximize their value to their clients. Here are a few.

Keep Your Clients Focused on What’s Knowable and Important

May 9, 2022 / by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

The media has always run rampant with scary headlines. That’s how they increase readership or website traffic. However, in this period of increased market volatility, economic uncertainty, geopolitical upheaval, mixed COVID signals, and deepening political divisions, the headlines can be incredibly overwhelming or, at the very least, extremely distracting.

Trying to consume all the news coming at us 24/7 is like trying to drink from a firehose. It’s critical to understand that the barrage of bad news and hype around market events can trigger emotional reactions that often lead to making costly decisions around their finances.

Want Your Clients to Take Their Financial Plan Seriously? Keep It Front and Center in Your Relationship

March 28, 2022 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Help Clients See the Value of Their Financial Plan

It wasn’t so long ago that clients perceived financial plans as an extension of the prospecting process to entice them to open an account and hand over their money. Many financial advisors feigned the role as a financial planner to create the perception of objectivity with the recommendations they would make. Clients received a faux leather-bound financial plan that just took up shelf space, never to be revisited by them or their advisor.

Fast forward to today, and we see an increasing number of financial advisors who are committed to a more holistic approach to working with clients, making the financial plan a critical cornerstone of their relationships. That, of course, is in response to what more and more clients are looking for in their advisor relationships—a plan that addresses the entirety of their financial life to guide them in life-critical decisions.

Why is it then that the value of a well-conceived financial plan seems to wane among clients who, further into the advisory relationship, begin to question their advisor’s advice or express disenchantment because their investments are underperforming their neighbor’s or colleagues’ portfolio? What do advisors need to do to get their clients to refocus on what’s really important?

Educate Clients about Market Volatility so They Can Confidently Stick to the Plan

January 4, 2021 / by Diana Marinova / Best Practices, Connelly Corner / 0 comments

Happy New Year from all of us at Don Connelly & Associates! Hopefully everyone will enjoy good health during the new year, achieving great success both personally and professionally.

As promised, this week we’re posting the second part of the recap blog post, covering two more popular topics our community of Advisors was most interested in during 2020 – market volatility and how to communicate with prospects and clients about it. We’ll also share a few stories and analogies you can use to convince clients to stick to the plan, no matter the market conditions.

How to Assure Clients That Volatility Is Part of the Strategy

August 17, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom / 0 comments

Unquestionably, the stock market has experienced extreme volatility in the last couple of years, elevating the anxiety levels of investors who grew complacent throughout a historic 11-year bull market. Just as they did throughout the wild gyrations of the 2008-2011 market, investors have grown intolerant of the recent, wild stock market gyrations, resulting in many choosing to make wholesale changes to their portfolio, switch financial advisors, or flee the market entirely.

But, what investors may not understand is that switching between asset classes to avoid volatility can actually have the opposite effect. It is incumbent upon financial advisors to help their clients understand that, with a sound investment strategy and a long-term perspective, volatility can actually be good for a stock portfolio because it has always been the primary force that drives market gains over time.

Making Sure You Make the Most of Market Uncertainty – What Advisors Read the Most on the Blog

July 13, 2020 / by Diana Marinova / Connelly Corner, Investing Wisdom / 0 comments

As you very well remember, we had a quick and severe market downturn in March and April 2020, followed by the greatest stock market rally in the history of the stock markets. Naturally, clients are panicked because of the market uncertainty. Regardless of where the DJIA closes today, we know for a fact that there will be another bear market – we just don’t know when.

To help you prepare yourself and your clients for what inevitably lies ahead, we bring you the top 10 most-read posts on the topic of market volatility, falling markets and growing your business in a post-pandemic world.

Bear Market: What You Do Will Make or Break Your Financial Advisor Career

June 15, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Every advisor gets just a few great career-building opportunities: Times when they can really establish themselves as experts, build long-term credibility, and differentiate themselves from the competition – most of whom are hiding from their clients because they don’t know how to guide them through the bear market.

What do the real pros do when things are scariest? When your clients are calling you scared witless, and they want to go to cash?

Coronavirus: An Opportunity for Financial Advisors to Strengthen Client Relationships

March 16, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Investing Wisdom, Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

As I write this after the market close on March 9th, 2020, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 1,800 points on the day, for a loss of 7.8%. The S&P 500 is down by 7.6% – the worst single day on for U.S. equities since the 2008 crisis.

This Monday loss follows some significant volatility late last week that already had a lot of investors on edge.

No doubt, most of you advisors out there are receiving some nervous calls and emails from your clients, wondering what’s going on.

This is where great advisors can earn their money. As a matter of fact, you as financial advisors may well not have as great an opportunity to add value for your clients for a very long time as you do today.

7 Things Many Financial Advisors Don’t Do, and Fail as a Result

June 17, 2019 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Much of the failure in this industry comes down to non-observance of the basics. Too many advisors fail not only to develop their soft skills but lack the necessary business acumen to remain viable. If you want to succeed as a financial advisor, learn from their mistakes and make sure you ‘do’ what they are ‘not doing’.

Here are some things that many advisors are not doing – but should be.

5 More Questions Prospects May Ask You before Deciding to Hire You as Their Financial Advisor

April 15, 2019 / by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

Choosing a financial advisor is a big decision for potential clients, especially if they’re new to the world of investing. Not only will they be looking for someone suitably qualified, they’ll be searching for someone who shares their goals and comes across as caring and authentic.

To try and deduce whether you’re the right fit for them, they’ll undoubtedly have questions. In this follow up to a previous post, let’s look at 5 more questions you may get asked in that first meeting.

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