Monday Morning Jumpstart with Dan Richards

10 minutes to drive your week

Topic for June 22, 2009: Sending clients a note to review where the market stands at mid-year

Listen to the interview

1. Even with the improvement in sentiment arising from the 40% recovery since March, many investors are still very anxious and looking for guidance and direction from their advisors.
2. One way to do that is by sending clients a mid year letter with an outlook broken down into "Where we've been", "Where we are today" and "Prospects for the period ahead."
3. Advisors are all different in their perspective and need to make this outlook reflect their own point of view going forward – a template letter has been posted on the website www.getkeepclients.com that advisors can use as a starting point. Some of the points in this template letter are summarized in today's interview.
4. In any form of communication, investors are looking for advisors to provide a balanced perspective – while the draft letter on the website provides a mid term outlook which is on balance positive, it also candidly talks about some of the short term issues confronting the economy and the market . To maintain our credibility, it's critical that we be forthright in talking about the negatives as well as the positives facing us in the period ahead.