Blogging column was a home run

The Tech Update column by Davis D. Janowski is one of the first things that I read each week in InvestmentNews.

The Tech Update column by Davis D. Janowski is one of the first things that I read each week in InvestmentNews.

He outdid himself in the Sept. 1 issue when he wrote about financial adviser blogs.

We are in the process of designing and implementing our own blog — though we won’t call it a blog or allow comments to be posted to it. But as we did our research, I was amazed at the number of blogs that are purely advertising, or close to it, that aren’t labeled as such and don’t have the required disclaimers.

I was starting to doubt the necessity of the legal review of our blog materials, because it is missing on so many sites. Your commentary confirmed that I am doing the right thing, even though it takes time to have our compliance group review all possible entries.

Anyway, thanks for a great article.

John H. LeBlanc
Founding principal
Back Bay Financial Group Inc.
Boston

Kudos on discussion of annuities for retirement

Kudos for the excellent discussion of retirement income strategies utilizing annuities in the white paper (“Delivering consistent retirement income results”) that ran in the Sept. 22 issue.

I found the white paper by Noelle E. Fox, an investment analyst and product analyst, and Drew A. Denning, vice president of income solutions in the retiree services group at the Principal Financial Group in Des Moines, Iowa, to be well-written. It included one of the best summaries of the “mechanics” behind variable annuities with guaranteed-minimum-withdrawal benefits.

Keep up the good work.

J. Peter Doyle
President
Doyle Financial Ltd.
Fox Grove, Ill.

Many ARS investors are small fry

I appreciated the article “Many ARS holders find silver lining” that appeared in the Oct. 13 issue.

As someone who is looking toward the Oct. 31 repurchase of auction rate securities by UBS AG of Zurich, Switzerland, I wanted to comment.

Although investors at the level of New York investor Harry Newton may be reluctant to give up the temporarily high ARS rates, it is important to remember how many of the 100,000 stranded in auction rate securities are small investors. We are the ones who had this security pushed on us as UBS rushed out.

The feeling of having been defrauded by an institution of UBS’ supposed integrity is a bitter one that I will never forget, and I am gone forever. Banks should figure that into their bottom line when they review how they handled this crisis.

I am grateful to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin and the other regulators who have worked to get my money returned.

I hope you will write again about all the other victims still languishing in Pacific Investment Management Co. LLC of Newport Beach, Calif., TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. of Omaha, Neb., and others.

I will never do business with any of them.

Lauren Kaplan
Individual investor
Nashville, Tenn.

Technology will help elderly stay in their homes

I read Alfred C. Clapp Jr.’s Retirement Watch column, “The looming crisis in caregiving” that appeared in the Oct. 6 issue, and I appreciated InvestmentNews running it.

The more exposure this issue gets, the more likely that something will be done about it. This truly is a crisis.

As the “age wave/silver tsunami” approaches, there will be seniors who don’t have enough money, but there won’t ever be enough brick and mortar or caregivers to care for the large numbers of them.

Active adults would mostly prefer to stay in their own homes as well, which is why technology is a necessary component. Technology will help allow care to be provided from any remote location.

Laura Mitchell
Marketing director
GrandCare Systems LLC
West Bend, Wis.