Behavioral finance says that in situations where the stock market is dropping, people’s fight-or-flight impulse causes their thinking to get compromised. At my practice we have been able to use mental accounting to counter this tendency and persuade clients to leave the equity portion of their portfolio alone until it recovers. During the 2008 downturn, we held a number of group meetings to help clients deal with the emotions of seeing their portfolio balances fall. First, we asked them how...

Jenny Martella, director of financial planning at Keatley Wealth Management, keeps clients focused on life goals to avoid the rash decisions that can come with a sudden windfall. In the latest Adviser Profile, she discusses: On the emotional stages of sudden wealth: Clients who receive a life-changing amount of money tend to pass through different stages, says Ms. Martella, who has worked with lottery winners as well as beneficiaries of inheritances. “People who become suddenly wealthy tend...

Kristin Hull, CEO and chief investment officer of Nia Impact Capital Advisors, knows the arguments well. In the latest Adviser Voices, Ms. Hull shares why she believes a strategy that doesn’t consider the behavior of companies to be misguided. [A] strategy that doesn’t consider the behavior of companies seems like an inefficient approach to wealth management. What many investment managers tend to overlook is that they’re bringing about potential ecological and social harm with their...

As stocks have rebounded from a scary early February slide, the up and down may be foreshadowing a new, more-volatile period for markets. So the latest Investing in Funds and ETFs section from the Journal Report crew asks: Is your fund portfolio ready? Advisers say there is no reason to abandon a long-term investing strategy […]

This month’s Ask Encore column in from the WSJ Report group looks at the most important questions to ask (and what makes for good answers) when sizing up a prospective adviser. Here are the sources cited: • Henry K. “Bud” Hebeler started and wrote the Analyze Now website and contributed hundreds of articles about retirement finances to numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal. This generous and thoughtful man died last year, but much of his work is still available online. For...