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November 16, 2012 at 12:48 PM
“Ten trillion dollars are sitting on the sidelines right now,” says Eric Taylor, vice president of annuity sales, Genworth Financial.
$10 trillion dollars: in bank accounts, squirreled away in mattresses, buried in backyards? I let that number sink in for a moment. It seems unfathomable. It becomes a mantra. Ten. Trillion. Dollars.
As I ponder the amount, I almost fall off the comfy couch where Taylor and I are sitting at the NAILBA 31 Conference being held at Orlando’s JW Marriott Nov. 14-17. And I have a little secret I don’t want to share with Taylor — I have no idea how many zeroes are in a trillion.
The best advisors, the cream of the crop, will succeed in any market, Taylor tells me. “They’re resilient that way. Maybe they wish the rates were better,” he adds. But who doesn’t, right?
For those top advisors everything is relative, says Taylor. They will get theirs. What about the rest of the advisory population? There’s that ten trillion dollars just sitting there waiting for a product or investment or advisor that makes sense.
But does anything, investment-wise, make sense these days to consumers? Maybe. At least Taylor wants to think so.
In regards to client psychology, consumers seem reluctant to get back in the game. Even the boomers, those most resilient of consumers, are feeling the bruises of more than a decade of extreme market volatility. Can we blame them?
They were gut-punched by the dot-com debacle, hammered by the housing bubble and, finally, they were humbled by the market crash of 2008. If there’s a silver lining to those negative stories, it’s that volatility leads to safety.
