What Are Stock Market Indexes?

Based in South Jordan, Utah, Allegis Wealth Advisors offers financial planning and services to clients across the country. Through its affiliate Allegis Investment Advisors, Allegis Wealth Advisors offers services including investment management and portfolio review. 

Stock market indexes provide valuable information to investors on market performance. They also provide a benchmark for tracking portfolio performance. A market index is the aggregate value of numerous stocks or investment vehicles. The performance of an index is used as a representation of the performance of an entire market or industry.

Companies that establish market indexes set up specific criteria for determining which securities to include in each index. For example, one index might include securities above a certain market capitalization, while another includes securities within a certain stock price range, and yet another includes companies in a specific industry or location. These criteria are closely monitored and adjusted. 

Widely used market indexes today include Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, the Nasdaq Composite Index, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

NAILBA Charitable Foundation Prepares for Annual Charity Auctions

Allegis Wealth Advisors provides financial planning and management services designed to help clients build financial strength and protect their families and businesses. The company also offers investment advisory services through Allegis Investment Advisors. 

Headquartered in South Jordan, Utah, Allegis Wealth Advisors maintains membership with the National Association of Independent Life Brokerage Agencies (NAILBA), which supports community causes through the NAILBA Charitable Foundation. The organization is preparing for its annual NAILBA Charitable Foundation Silent and Live Auction, to take place November 16, 2017. 

The Silent Auction will include an assortment of items, including donations from NAILBA affiliates and members of the community. Proceeds will go toward community causes. The Live Auction will take place in conjunction with the Mooers Award Dinner, with bidding conducted by professional auctioneer Steve Katz, of NAILBA member agency Premier Brokerage Services.

The NAILBA Charitable Foundation Silent and Live Auction will take place at the Diplomat Resort and Spa in Hollywood, Florida.

Life Insurance - A Vital Tool in Risk-Adverse Retirement Planning

Allegis Wealth Advisors is a provider of focused risk and investment management services centered on enabling independent investment managers to meet diverse client needs. Allegis Wealth Advisors emphasizes a “one-stop-shop” approach in providing the back-end and front-end solutions that drive long-term client relationships.

Success-driven retirement planning strategies such as those offered by Allegis Investment Advisors typically include a mix of stock and bonds and life insurance allocations. The uses of insurance include ensuring a steady income should the primary breadwinner pass away or become incapacitated. Insurance plans effectively mitigate the long-term risks associated with any retirement plan, which become more pronounced as couples age. 

A particular area of concern is the decade prior to retirement, when many families are playing catch-up in terms of meeting overall retirement goals. Should a spouse die, the surviving partner may experience a serious shortfall in retirement savings and never recover financially. This is amplified by the fact that decreases in expenses during retirement years are typically not enough to offset the drop in income. For this reason, 10-to-15-year term life insurance coverage is often recommended for both spouses during the years before retirement.

The Importance of a Personalized Retirement Planning Approach

Allegis Wealth Advisors provides marketing and management solutions that enable wealth and risk advisors to reach clients and generate robust portfolio returns. Experienced Allegis Wealth Advisors team members assist representatives in developing focused seminars and high-quality referrals that provide a low-cost pathway to building a client base.

Emphasizing a “one roof” approach, the firm employs a leading-edge compensation model in providing a full range of financial products and services. One area of extensive knowledge is retirement planning, which requires a careful weighing of client objectives and timeframe with current market dynamics.

One common flaw when designing a retirement portfolio is to look at “averages” and not the individual whose assets are being managed. Relying on average baseline scenarios can result in lumping together a number of factors that, taken separately, point to an individual whose changing circumstances are unlikely to mirror the average retiree.

The successful financial advisor takes time to discuss the impacts of life choices with clients as they change over time and the odds that a specific decision will have a positive or negative impact on retirement savings. This active weighing of risks and returns enables a more accurate calibration of portfolio allocation in ways that match client expectations. Allegis Investment Advisors offers custom strategic solutions that emphasize a team approach to weighing options and ensuring that clients are satisfied in the long term with the financial decisions they make.

Information Required for a Personal Needs Analysis

Providing advisory services through Allegis Investment Advisors, Allegis Wealth Advisors seeks to educate investors and inspire them to take action. Allegis Wealth Advisors offers a wide array of services, including retirement planning and personal needs analysis.

Investors are often asked to supply information regarding their objectives, current financial situations, and personal needs in order to complete the personal needs analysis associated with retirement planning. The information typically required includes:

1. Personal information, such as contact information, marital status, and dependents.

2. Employment information, like company name and address and commencement date.

3. Income information, including annual salary, bonus and commissions, income from interest, rentals and dividends, and social security benefits. 

4. Household expenses like utilities, food, insurance, car and mortgage payments, health care costs, entertainment, and any additional planned expenses.

5. Assets, including your residence, cars, jewelry, artwork, savings, annuities, mutual funds, etc.

6. Liabilities, such as a mortgage, investment properties, credit cards, and personal loans.

What is NAILBA’s Douglas Mooers Award for Excellence?

From its headquarters in South Jordan, Utah, Allegis Wealth Advisors draws upon the talents of its team of investment advisors to provide wealth management services to clients throughout the United States. Additionally, Allegis Wealth Advisors retains membership to the National Association of Independent Life Brokerage Agencies (NAILBA), which represents and advocates on behalf of agencies in the life brokerage sector.

Beyond this work, NAILBA oversees the Douglas Mooers Award for Excellence, its most coveted prize. Established in 1986, the award carries the name of the founding chairman of NAILBA and is given annually to individuals who demonstrate an exemplary commitment to ensuring independent brokerage receives recognition as a legitimate distribution system.

Current and past NAILBA member principals may receive nomination, in addition to NAILBA peer group members, leading insurance industry executives, and insurance industry press members. All nominees have superb community service records, in addition to several key career accomplishments. The 2017 Douglas Mooers Award for Excellence is scheduled for presentation at NAILBA 36, the NAILBA’s annual conference, between November 16th and November 18th.

Evaluating Retirement Planning Strategies

Serving the needs of wealth and risk professionals, Allegis Wealth Advisors maintains a strong presence in the financial services sphere. Emphasizing a personalized approach to client success, Allegis Wealth Advisors offers a depth of support associated with leading brokerages. 

One aspect of successful retirement planning involves performing an annual checkup that encompasses the full spectrum of social security benefits and other future income sources. The social security end of the spectrum can be easily ascertained through visiting www.ssa.gov and accessing estimated lifetime distributions.

Just as important is to assess life events such as marriage, divorce, new family members, and property acquisitions and sales. These help define asset size and liquidity, as well as investment timeframe and risk tolerance. Take a close look at the employer-sponsored plan and evaluate the potential for directing funds into new areas such as tax-advantaged Roth accounts. At the same time, consider as well whether contributions can be increased relative to the plan maximum.

To learn more about Allegis Investment Advisors’ full range of solutions, visit www.allegiswa.com.

Creating a Plan toward Retirement Stability

At the forefront of an expanding industry, Allegis Wealth Advisors provides wealth and risk professionals with resources for providing people with means of building secure financial futures. One aspect of this involves Allegis Wealth Advisors setting in place the financial planning program Wealth Building Cornerstones, which provides an economics-based foundation to efficiently growing long-term assets. 

Saving for early retirement is a key goal of many people who use Allegis Investment Advisors’ approach, and it begins by setting down a formal plan on how to achieve financial security. Writing down goals helps solidify a sense of mission and provides definite direction through life’s ups and downs. 

The plan should encompass cash flow and savings goals and can incorporate elements such as business, paper assets, and real property holdings. The plan also should be formulated to encompass three distinct financial stages, including the career years of aggressive accumulation, semi-retirement years of asset growth, and the “spending down” of such assets during final retirement years. 

The results of this approach are well demonstrated. A Harvard Business School study extending three decades found that the 3 percent of participants with detailed written goals achieved results that exceeded those of the 83 percent with no well-defined goals by a factor of 10.

Creating New Investment Opportunities with a Rollover IRA

Based in Utah, Allegis Wealth Advisors provides independent investment advisors with a range of tools and financial services to help them achieve their clients' financial goals. The Allegis Wealth Advisors team focuses on supplying professional advice and financial products involving investment management, insurance planning, estate planning, and retirement. One of the retirement investment options the firm focuses on is rollover IRAs.

A rollover IRA is an account funded by the transfer of money from a retirement plan with an former employer. Typically, employees can transfer from a 401(k) with a past employer to a rollover IRA without any tax considerations. Once proceeds from a 401(k) are received, individuals have 60 days to complete the transaction. Money in a rollover IRA is subject to the same restrictions as other IRAs. For example, withdrawals will incur taxation and a penalty. 

This option severs ties with past employers while giving individuals greater say over exactly where their retirement money is invested. A rollover IRA literally opens the door to tens of thousands of investments. The other options for a 401(k) with a previous employer include cashing out, which incurs very large penalties, and moving the money into a new employer’s 401(k) plan, which severely limits the investment options.

Operation Whale Watch - A Successful O.U.R. Mission

Based in Utah, Allegis Wealth Advisors works closely with clients to help them achieve financial stability and security and offers tools to financial and investment advisors. Allegis Wealth Advisors gives back to the community through its support of key charitable organizations, such as Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), which seeks to liberate victims of human trafficking and prosecute perpetrators.

One of the organization’s recent successes was Operation Whale Watch in Latin America. This campaign rescued 24 young women, including one minor, and resulted in the arrest of five traffickers. Because of the one minor, these individuals face between 15 and 30 years in prison.

Before the mission was attempted, it was classified as high risk for several reasons. The traffickers involved with the ring were professionals with strong connections to organized crime. Furthermore, the perpetrators were armed, and the local police provided little to no help because they were on the payroll of the crime ring. Before attempting a mission, O.U.R. works with U.S. embassies and the federal government to identify hurdles, such as local police being compromised.

Despite the high-risk nature of the mission, it paid off immensely and put a sizeable dent in Latin American human trafficking.

Determining the Financial Needs of Retirement

Headquartered in Jordan, Utah, Allegis Wealth Advisors offers clients a wide range of highly personalized services, including retirement planning. Allegis Wealth Advisors’ financial experts are skilled personal needs analysts.

Planning for the financial aspect of retirement requires making educated assumptions regarding factors such as expected income and life expectancy (after retirement). Even minor changes in any one factor can have major financial impacts. Because of its direct influence on buying power, the rate of inflation is one of the most critical factors in retirement planning. The number of years spent in retirement is another important consideration. Staying in the workplace longer reduces the number of years in retirement and the level of financial assets required to fund it.

Additional factors to consider involve lifestyle choices, including housing, location, hobbies, travel, and part-time employment plans, and the anticipated rate of return an investor can reasonably expect while saving for retirement.

Advisory services are offered through Allegis Investment Advisors, an SEC Registered Investment Advisor.

Understanding Stock Market Indexes

No doubt you’ve seen headlines reporting that a particular stock index is up or down. But do you know what an index is, and how understanding the nuts and bolts of a specific index may be helpful to you?

An index is simply a way to measure and report the fluctuations of a pool of securities or a representative segment of a market. An index is developed by a company that sets specific criteria to determine which securities are included in the index based on factors such as a company’s size or location, or the liquidity of its stock. For example, the S&P 500 is an index made up of mostly large-cap U.S.-based companies that Standard & Poor’s considers to be leading representatives of a cross-section of industries.

The company that develops the index tracks the performance of its components and aggregates the data to produce a single figure that represents the index as a whole. Virtually every asset class is tracked by at least one index, but because of the size and variety of the stock market, there are more stock indexes than any other type. It’s important to note that the performance of an unmanaged index is not indicative of the performance of any specific security. Individuals cannot invest directly in an index.

Comparing apples to oranges 
Since indexes encompass a wide range of securities, it’s important to know what segment of the market a particular index covers. For instance, a composite index follows a specific stock exchange. The Nasdaq Composite Index includes all the stocks listed on the Nasdaq market. Conversely, sector indexes track securities in a specific industry.

Even indexes that include the same securities may not operate in precisely the same way. Generally, indexes tend to be either price-weighted or market capitalization-weighted. If an index is price-weighted, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the impact of each stock on the overall average is proportional to its price compared to other stocks in the index. With a price-weighted index, the highest-priced stocks would have the most impact on the average. For example, a 1 percentage point drop in the price of a stock selling for $80 per share would have more impact on the overall index’s performance than a 1 percentage point drop in the price of a stock that had been selling for $40 a share.

If an index is market capitalization-weighted or market value-weighted, such as the Nasdaq Composite Index or the S&P 500 Composite Index, the average of the index is adjusted to take into account the relative size of each company (its market cap) to reflect its importance to the index. Stocks with a larger market capitalization have a greater influence on how the index performs than stocks with a smaller market capitalization. For example, if the stock of a $10 billion market-cap company drops by 1 percentage point, it will drag down the index’s performance more than a 1 percentage point drop in the share price of a $1 billion market-cap company.

Though an index adheres to a set of guidelines for selection of the securities it includes, the company that oversees the index generally reviews the security selection periodically and may make occasional changes. For example, some indexes may rebalance if an individual security grows so large that it dominates the index. Others have a limit on how much of the index can be devoted to a particular sector or industry, and may rebalance if the proportion gets skewed.

Indexes are worth watching 
Stock indexes can provide valuable information for the individual investor. If checked regularly, an index can provide information that may help you stay abreast of how the stock market in general, or a particular segment of it, is faring. However, understanding the differences between indexes and how each one works will help you make better use of the information they provide. All investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal, and there is no guarantee that any investment strategy will be successful.