Dear Friend,

Welcome to "The Jalbert Report", a weekly newsletter designed to provide you tips and updates so that you can "Live Well" during your retirement years.

Please feel free to forward this FREE newsletter to any of your friends and relatives who you believe might find the information within helpful.

And if for some reason, you would no longer like to receive this newsletter, it's really easy to take your name off the list at the bottom.

Enjoy reading!

Russ

Probably the one that is of most concern above is the one on bonds.  Many retirees flee to the perceived safety of bonds when the market is volatile, like it has been lately.

But bond values have an inverse relationship with interest rates.  That means when interest rates go up, bond values fall.  The opposite is true as well.

Given that interest rates can only move up at this point, you can fully expect bond values to fall in the future.  This will catch many unsuspecting retiree's by surprise.

People Are Changing Advisors!

Smart Money did a study on how people view their brokers (click here for the results).  They found that a whopping 44% of people have either already changed advisors or are thinking about it.  That's a huge number!

The good news here is that we aren't seeing people leave us.  In fact, it's exactly the opposite.  It's nice to know that we are doing a good job taking care of our clients.

And here's where you have a great opportunity to do your friends a favor.  Why not introduce them to me?  Odds are roughly 50 / 50 that they are looking for help.  You may make a positive difference in their lives.

Here’s a few bits that I found reported on Yahoo Finance over the past week:

• McDonald's 4th quarter profit rose 23% to $1.22 billion.
• Google reported a record $1.97 billion net profit for the 4th quarter.
• Medtronic will acquire Invatec and two affiliated companies for an initial payment of $350 million.
• The median sales price of existing homes in December was $178,300, up 1.5% from a year earlier and the first yearly gain since August 2007.
• Oracle will hire 2,000 sales and engineering employees as it looks to expand into the hardware business.
• BlackRock, the world's biggest money manager, reported that 4th quarter net profit rose 5-fold to $256 million.
• Boeing's 4th quarter net income jumped to $1.3 billion compared with a loss of $86 million a year ago.
• Ford reported that it earned $2.7 billion in 2009, its 1st full-year profit since 2005, and said that it expects to be profitable again in 2010.
• Procter & Gamble, the world's largest consumer-products company, topped analysts' estimates by posting a $4.66 billion quarterly net income.
• AT&T's quarterly net earnings rose 26% to $3.01 billion.
• Nissan Motor and the U.S. Energy Department closed a $1.4 billion loan to build an electric car and an advanced battery manufacturing facility in Smyrna, Tennessee.

If you would like to talk to me about anything discussed above, please feel free to call our office at (877) 807-SAFE (7233).

Russell K. Jalbert, CFP^®, one of the nation's leading financial professionals, has advised successful individuals in the management and distribution of their wealth for more than 35 years. Russ has discovered many alternatives to conventional investment practices. His priority is to educate people to understand they don’t have to accept risk in order to grow their money.