Expert's are Alway's Right, Aren't they?

Let’s take a look at the history of expert advice over the last 20 years. Variable annuities have been scrutinized badly over the last 10 years or so, for some valid reasons, but mostly for the wrong reasons. If we look back over the past 20 years we will see that, depending on the times, experts recommend one investment over another. I believe the time for variable annuities to be recommended is coming.

There are very few people who can deny that different investments look better during different time periods. With this article I wanted to look back over the last 20 years at the “in favor” investments and see how they have done. I also believe in the next few years that variable annuities will be in favor because of the huge guarantees they offer.

If we go back to the beginning of the 1980’s we were swept by Reganomics and had a sense of pride to be Americans again. After all we just got done with the turbulent 1970’s and it seemed as though we got a fresh start with President Regan. In fact in 1982 we witnessed the beginning of the greatest bull market we had ever seen.

At that time we saw the rise of blue chip stocks and junk bonds as being the preferred investments. These were also a tough sell because you had to compete with money market accounts at 10%+ interest rates. The vast majority of Americans though decided to invest in the stock market. We are talking about individual stocks and bonds I might add, mutual funds were being sold, but not at the rate they are being sold now.

The times were good and the stock market was on fire. Experts proclaimed that junk bonds and individual stocks were the place to be. Why buy a mutual fund they said, the fees are high and you had a sales load of, in some cases, 8%. They pounded their fists stocks and bonds only, not mutual funds!

Then it happened, the crash of 1987. Although the market had a relatively quick recovery people became very skeptical of investing in individual stocks. We then had all the insider trading scandals break, names like Ivan Boseky and Michael Milken will always be remembered in the financial services industry whether it be for good or bad they have their place in history.

Then we had the meltdown of the junk bond market in the early 1990’s. This was a direct result of the incarceration of Michael Milken as he was THE player in that area and kept the junk bond market in check. At that time mutual funds began to pick up in popularity, the up-front loads started to come down and the press coverage started to become more positive.

This trend of mutual fund investing continued through out the 1990’s. Even though in the late 1990’s we saw increased activity of day trading of individual equities. This did not compare to the years past though. Clearly the new trend was mutual funds and as more Americans began to invest in these instruments the media started to change its tune.

Do not buy loaded or broker sold mutual funds, buy the index funds! They are cheap and better than broker sold funds, was their argument. We began to see that cheaper did not mean better. Names like Janus and Invesco earned their right of passage as being the problem of mutual funds in the industry. This was because as the market took its last breathe in April of 2000 it all fell away from us.

Never before in most of our life times did we see the market take a dive the way it did in 2000. All the illusions people had about 20% returns and technology investments never going down hit us square in the eye. It wasn’t real, those returns did not exist, this event that lasted for nearly 3 years created havoc for investors. Nobody likes loses and for 3 years that is all we had, or was it?

The experts quickly changed their tune again. Mutual funds are still the way to go, but now it is values funds, bond funds and real estate funds. Why is this? Because they are the only things giving positive returns. This is the problem, now people are invested in bond funds, energy funds and real estate portfolios after 4 years of positive returns. The experts who screamed to own these instruments are over-looking the obvious, the market will correct this anomaly just as it had in the past.

Now, half way through the first decade of the new millennium, we are in a quagmire should we continue the way we are going or make a change? I believe we need to make a change. Clearly the market will always correct imbalances, it has done this for the last 100 years and it will do it for another 100 years in the future. What are we doing to protect ourselves? The answer is simple, not much.

The experts bear down on fighting the variable annuity industry when they are giving you the best of both worlds, upside potential and downside protection. They do this through living benefits. You will always hear the index people say, “Buy the index funds that’s all you need”, but I believe action speaks louder than words. Where were these people in 2000 to 2003? They were silent, silent as a church mouse.

Why was this? Easy they looked like fools. No one looked at how the S&P was structured. It was, and is, a large cap technology growth fund and it got killed in the early 2000’s. All these people that recommended this went silent for so long because they lost credibility. Then when the market rebounded in 2003 they came back, “I told you so!” they exclaimed.

Give me a break. Most gurus went silent from 2000 to 2003 because no one knew what was going to happen. The bashing of variable annuities was still there but not as bad. This seems to be the problem with the experts, when things “look” good at the moment they say you do not need variable annuities, “they suck” they say. When you look at the tough times though and you have a vehicle like a variable annuity providing equity investments with guarantees attached to them I think they see the value then.

Experts give you the rose colored glasses view, always. They say the market always provides to those with patience, and to a certain extent they are right. What they do not factor in is that over the long term markets expand and contract and it does not provide you with a steady 10% rate of return. If the market always gave us 10% we’d all be rich.

We must look at the market as an entity with a mind of its own it is neither for you nor against you. At times it is playful and happy and at other times it is mean and dangerous. What fortunes will it bring for you? I do not know, no one knows. What I do know is that things will be turbulent again and I will be very happy knowing my variable annuity carries a guarantee; does your investment carry a guarantee?

Finding the right variable annuity takes time and research. Use the only unbiased variable annuity research site available, www.annuityiq.com.

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