Bob Seawright, Madison Avenue Securities

About the Author

Bob Seawright, Madison Avenue Securities

Bob Seawright is chief investment and information officer for Madison Avenue Securities in San Diego and a frequent writer on financial planning and related matters. He was educated at Duke University, where he received his J.D. in 1981. He holds securities and insurance licenses as well as a number of industry designations.

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  Five Good Questions for Tadas Viskanta of Abnormal Returns

  By Bob Seawright, Madison Avenue Securities  |  May 4, 2012

  The author says that active investors need to be aware that the odds are against them and that there are real costs, both explicit and implicit, in taking such an active approach.

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  The Best of Both Worlds: Active and Passive Investing

  By Bob Seawright, Madison Avenue Securities  |  April 24, 2012

  Passive investing is predicated upon the efficient markets hypothesis that it is impossible to “beat the market” over time except by being lucky. In reality, however, there is an abundance of evidence that markets are less than perfectly efficient.

• Evidence Over Ideology

  By Bob Seawright  |  March 26, 2012

  In the words of the great Benjamin Graham, an “investor’s chief problem – and even his worst enemy – is likely to be himself.”

• The Annuity Puzzle

  By Bob Seawright, Madison Avenue Securities  |  February 1, 2012

  Since at least 1965 and the seminal research of Menachem Yaari, economists have recognized that retirees should convert far more of their assets into an income annuity at retirement than they do

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  A Rational Look at a Much Maligned Product

  By Bob Seawright, Madison Avenue Securities  |  November 23, 2011

  Few products within the financial services industry have received as much consistent criticism as fixed index annuities. An FIA is a type of deferred fixed annuity that earns interest or provides benefits that are linked to an external reference or index, most commonly the S&P 500. The insurer underwriting the...

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  Five Good Questions for LPL's Jeffrey Kleintop

  By Bob Seawright, Madison Avenue Securities  |  November 7, 2011

  The chief investment officer shares his views on the markets, Occupy Wall Street and more.

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  Five Good Questions for Behavioral Economist Dan Ariely

  By Bob Seawright, Madison Avenue Securities  |  November 2, 2011

  When it comes to making decisions, using emotions is likely to be unsuccessful or lead us astray; money isn’t unique in that regard.

• Despite Pain, Encourage Clients to Stay the Course

  By Bob Seawright, Madison Avenue Securities  |  October 19, 2011

  The more frequently clients look at portfolio performance, the more likely they are to feel the pain of loss and to start trading.

• Finding Value in a Loser’s Game

  By Bob Seawright, Madison Avenue Securities  |  September 30, 2011

  As John Kenneth Galbraith famously pointed out, we have two classes of forecasters: those who don’t know and those who don’t know they don’t know.

• Bold Forecasts but Timid Choices

  By Bob Seawright  |  September 29, 2011

  WHEN I WAS MUCH YOUNGER and new to working in the capital markets, an excellent mentor taught me a market maxim that has served me well. More money has been lost because of four words than at the point of a gun. Those four words are “This time is different.”...