Firm:
AG Wealth Management, PLLC
Job Title:
Founder & CEO
Biography:
Asad Gourani earned a BBA in Finance from Eastern Michigan University. Prior to establishing AG Wealth Management, Asad worked as a Personal Banker where he had the pleasure to work with people from different ages and background to assist them with their banking needs. During his time at Eastern Michigan University, he gained experience in financial planning by interning for an established local financial planning firm, as well as earning the Accredited Asset Management Specialist® and Accredited Portfolio Management Advisor® designations from the College for Financial Planning.
With the financial industry increasingly becoming geared towards sales rather than advice, AG Wealth Management decided to take a different route by putting their clients' interest first.
Asad and his team are a fiduciary, fee-only firm who refuses to earn any backdoor commission from anyone. Put it in other terms, they don't have incentives to sell clients products that they don't need. Their only incentive is their clients' financial progress.
Education:
BBA, Finance, Eastern Michigan University
Assets Under Management:
$1 million
CRD Number:
6867822
Disclaimer:
AG Wealth Management, PLLC (“AGWM”) is a registered investment adviser offering advisory services in the State of Michigan and in other jurisdictions where exempted. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The presence of this website on the Internet shall not be directly or indirectly interpreted as a solicitation of investment advisory services to persons of another jurisdiction unless otherwise permitted by statute. Follow-up or individualized responses to consumers in a particular state by AGWM in the rendering of personalized investment advice for compensation shall not be made without our first complying with jurisdiction requirements or pursuant an applicable state exemption.
All written content on this site is for information purposes only. Opinions expressed herein are solely those of AGWM, unless otherwise specifically cited. Material presented is believed to be from reliable sources and no representations are made by our firm as to another parties’ informational accuracy or completeness. All information or ideas provided should be discussed in detail with an advisor, accountant or legal counsel prior to implementation.
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Asad Gourani Interview with Fox 2 -
The impact of the latest Interest rate hike.
This is an interesting question that has been getting asked more and more frequently as the markets keep rising. Since I don't know your personal situation and I can't give any sort of investment advice without knowing all variables, let me give you an argument for both sides instead, hopefully this could help you make up your mind.
Since we can't time the market or make a good prediction to the near future, let me say that statistically speaking markets go up 2/3 of the time, and go down 1/3 of the time, which essentially means dollar cost averaging works in your favor 1/3 of the time where you find yourself adding more shares for a certain dollar value (assuming a disciplined approach is taken when the market isn't doing good.), but in 2/3 of the time you're actually dollar cost averaging on the way up therefore buying fewer shares for the same dollar amount.
Now, the risk of buying all at once is especially significant in the event you are near or in retirement, this way you simply won't have the time necessary to accumulate more to buy at these lower prices.
Tip: Whether you decide to buy now or wait, staying diversified is the most important thing that you could do even if you are passively invested. Look into different asset classes and different regions that have a lower correlation to the SP500. This way, in the event of turndown you'll be able to rebalance and take out gains from the better performing asset classes, and re-allocating capital to the worse performing asset classes.
There's no real minimum to start buying any type of stock. However, you have to keep in mind trading cost that could eat up from your investments, most discount brokerage platform offer trades anywhere between $4.95 to $9.95 nowadays. Also, there's more and more commission-free ETFs and Mutual funds that I encourage you to look at, this way you'd be able to potentially save on commissions while buying a whole basket of stocks and staying diversified rather than buying individual stocks.
First of all, saving a big amount by the age of 21 is an achievement by itself so congratulations on being very disciplined!
There are several questions you should ask yourself first before making the decision to invest your money in the financial markets or keeping in cash equivalents (such as CDs). What is your time horizon first of all? What is your risk tolerance? And what is your goal? Of course, you have to keep in mind that risk and rewards are directly correlated.
To keep my answer short and simple, first, keep 6 months worth of expenses as an emergency fund in a savings account (You could put it in a money market account or keep it in very short-term CDs) and simply don't touch this money. Now look at your goal, if it is to build wealth, then CDs would likely not fit your needs because they are more likely only about to keep up with inflation only without making you any true gains.
Then, if you decide to invest, look at how much time you have and how much risk you could tolerate, and this is the part that should be carefully analyzed because the last thing that you want is to have to sell in the event of a downturn because you need the money or simply can't stomach the volatility.
Tip: For any money going towards your retirement, make sure you use your employer 401(k) if they offer a plan, and/or look into opening an IRA, tax advantages for these accounts could also add a lot of value over time.
Asad Gourani
www.agwealthm.com
First of all congratulations on getting a head start on saving for retirement (time is your biggest asset).
Although there's no one right way to deal with this situation, my general rule of thumb is start by not leaving any money on the table from employers match (this is just free money for you), then look at the interest that you're paying on your student loans, if it's in excess of 5-6% then it makes sense to make more payments and saving on interest rather than taking investment risk. If your interest is on the lower end (3-4%) it could make sense for you to invest the extra money instead.
With that being said, it's wise to have 3-6 worth of living expenses accessible to you just in case of an emergency before you increase payments to your 401k or towards your loans.
Best of luck.
What a robo-advisor could do is set an asset allocation based your goals, risk, time horizon with certain good features such as tax loss harvesting and such.
However, there are two big elements where the robo-advisor doesn't work and they are:
-integrating your bigger financial picture with your investments, things such as how to plan for retirement, children education and such. How much do you need to put aside now to be able to reach your needs? What retirement accounts do you have, and how does it make sense to use them?
-The emotional element, studies have shown that the biggest drag on portfolio returns are bad decisions when it comes to impulsive buying and selling (selling out of panic when the market goes down, buying only on the way up)
By the way, more and more advisors now using robo-advisors for their clients where they add the value in things where robos can't so it's not completely a question of robo vs humans.