Author Archives: jwatkins

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About jwatkins

I am a securities and ERISA attorney. I hold CFP Board Emeritus™ status and I am an Accredited Wealth Management Advisor™. I provide fiduciary risk management consulting to 401k/430b plans, trustees, RIAs and other investment fiduciaries. I am a 1977 graduate of Georgia State University and a 1981 graduate of the University of Notre Dame Law School. I am the author of "CommonSense InvestSense: The Power of the Informed Investor" and "The 401(k)/403(b) Investment Manual: What Plan Sponsors and Plan Participants REALLY Need To Know" I write two blogs, "CommonSense InvestSense, investsense.com, and "The Prudent Investment Fiduciary Rules, fiduciaryinvestsense.com. As a former compliance director, I have extensive experience in evaluating the legal prudence of various types of investments, including mutual funds and annuities. My goal is to combine my legal and compliance experience in order to help educate investors and investment fiduciaries on sound, proven investment strategies that will help them protect their financial security and/or avoid unnecessary fiduciary liability exposure.

Costs, Correlations, and Prudent Fiduciary Investing

The financial adviser tells you that a fund has a five-year compound return of 20 percent. The fund’s advertisement tells you that the fund has a five-year compound return of 20 percent. Morningstar tells you that the fund has a … Continue reading

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Hughes v. Northwestern University and the Future of 401(k) Plans

I thoroughly enjoy reading a well-reasoned legal brief or decision. For instance, the Enron1 decision, while lengthy, is an excellent treatise on ERISA. The First Circuit’s decision in Brotherston v. Putnam Investments, LLC2 is one of the best decisions I … Continue reading

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The Active Management Value Ratio: Quantifying the “New” Fiduciary Prudence

Right now, the DOL and the SEC are trying to define “prudence” and “best interest,” respectively. I am on record as saying that the simplest and most logical step would be one, universal standard of prudence, using the Investment Advisor’s … Continue reading

Posted in 401k, 401k compliance, 401k investments, 403b, Active Management Value Ratio, cost-efficiency, DOL fiduciary rule, fiduciary compliance, fiduciary liability, Fiduciary prudence, fiduciary responsibility, pension plans, retirement planning, retirement plans, wealth preservation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New Charley Ellis interview

People that know me know how much I respect Charley Ellis. His classic, “Winning the Loser’s Game, ” changed my whole perspective on investing. My popular metric, the Active Management Value Ratio, is based primarily on WLG. Robin Powell has … Continue reading

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“The Active Management Value Ratio 4.0: What Investors and Investment Fiduciaries REALLY Need to Know About Wealth Accumulation and Preservation”

The new video is available on the InvestSense YouTube channel.

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2Q 2021 Active Management Value Ratio “Cheat Sheet:” Every Picture Tells A Story

What was the fund’s stated return? At that point, many people, both investment professionals and ordinary investors, stop their AMVR analysis of the actively managed fund in question, unnecessarily exposing themselves to potential financial losses and/or legal liability. When InvestSense … Continue reading

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CommonSense InvestSense ERISA 401(k)/403(b) Litigation

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet. – Father Theodore Hesburgh, University of Notre Dame Over twenty years ago, I registered the domain name “investsense.com.” Since then, I … Continue reading

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Cost-Efficiency and Correlation of Returns: The Often Overlooked Factors in Fiduciary Investing

“Properly measured, the average actively managed dollar must underperform the average passively managed dollar, net of costs….The best way to measure a manager’s performance is to compare his or her return with that of a comparable passive alternative.”1 Ask a … Continue reading

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The SCOTUS Decision on Hughes v. Northwestern University: A Pivotal Point for Plan Sponsors and Plan Advisers?

The Solicitor General of the United States recently filed an amicus brief with SCOTUS asking the Court to hear the case of Hughes v. Northwestern University (Northwestern). The case involves questions regarding the management of University’s 403(b) plan, specifically potential … Continue reading

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1Q 2021 AMVR Cost-Efficiency “Cheat Sheet”

We provide two sets of data so that users can choose which data to use. The nominal data is based on the publicly disclosed data. The second set of data is the nominal data adjusted for risk and the funds’ … Continue reading

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