“People are scared for their health and their families, and then you add onto that the oil-price fall -- reading that over the weekend has been a definite worry for clients,” Kumar said. “Our job is to reassure them that their portfolios are diversified, and that their horizons are long-term.”
‘Not Healthy’
While advisers understand the impulse among clients to do something, they’re working to temper those emotions.
Watching the market day-by-day, or even month-by-month, “it’s like stepping on a scale every half hour while you are dieting,” said Dana Anspach, founder of Sensible Money, a registered investment advisory firm in Scottsdale, Arizona. “It’s not healthy.”
Some savvy investors are converting traditional investment retirement accounts to Roth IRAs, said Dennis Nolte, a financial planner at Seacoast Investment Services in Oviedo, Florida.
With a traditional IRA, holders will pay income tax when they tap into the account in retirement. Roth IRAs are funded with after-tax money, which can be withdrawn tax-free later in life. In happier market times, the need to pay taxes on the money being converted to a Roth from a traditional IRA was a big disincentive. Now, for better or worse, that prospect doesn’t loom so large.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.