Is Your Financial Advisor Setting You Up for Mediocrity?
I’m a Certified Financial Planner and founder of an investment advisor firm managing millions in client assets. How do I manage our client’s portfolios? It’s the opposite of what most financial advisors preach. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: conventional investing advice isn’t designed to maximize your wealth. It’s designed to protect advisors and collect fees. That […]
The $4M Mistake Most Tech Professionals Make
A few years ago, a Senior Engineer at a big tech company came to me with a problem. He was 42, earning $380K annually, and had accumulated $1.2M across various accounts. His goal? Retire by 52 with enough to maintain his lifestyle. What he really wanted was to travel with his wife in his 50s, […]
What Every Pre-Retiree Needs to Know About Investing Today
The investment landscape has shifted dramatically over the past few years. For decades, passive investing dominated financial advice—buy index funds, hold forever, and trust the market to deliver returns. But as we move through 2025, pre-retirees face a different and changing environment. If you’re within ten to fifteen years of retirement, the investing style you […]
Five Portfolio Mistakes That Can Derail Your Retirement Timeline
Planning to retire early? Join the club. But here’s the thing—wanting early retirement and achieving it are two different things. The gap between goals and reality often comes down to some key portfolio mistakes that could push your retirement date back by years. At Paraiba Wealth, we specialize in working with pre-retirees. Here are five […]
How to Build a High-Conviction Growth Portfolio in the AI-Powered Era
In an investment landscape dominated by artificial intelligence, the question isn’t whether to embrace concentrated, high-conviction strategies—it’s how to do so intelligently. If you’re managing your own portfolio or working with an RIA that builds individual stock portfolios, understanding high-conviction growth investing has never mattered more. What High-Conviction Investing Means High-conviction investing means concentrating capital […]
Real Companies or Stock Baskets? Here’s What Every Investor Should Know
Imagine walking through a farmer’s market. You see bins brimming with fresh apples, oranges, and berries—each fruit clearly labeled and priced. Now picture a “mystery basket” of mixed fruit where you aren’t exactly sure what’s inside or how fresh it is. Which feels more appealing? That “fruit vs. basket” scenario shows us an important lesson […]
Beyond the Hype: Using Thematic Investing to Build a Resilient Portfolio
In investing, hype cycles arrive fast, narratives shift faster, and prices can sprint ahead of business reality. That gap between valuation and fundamentals is where many portfolios take on risk they didn’t intend. There’s a way to tap into innovation without turning your plan into a guessing game: pair thematic investing with active management. Instead […]
The 60/40 Portfolio vs the New Retirement Reality
Picture your retirement accounts in 2022. If you followed the traditional “safe” approach with a 60/40 portfolio, you watched your nest egg shrink by 17% as both stocks AND bonds tumbled together. Yet, your financial advisor probably told you this was just temporary turbulence. But here’s what they might not have told you: you’re planning […]
Why ‘Safe Stocks’ Aren’t So Safe Anymore
The traditional notion of investing in “safe stocks”—companies like Nike, Starbucks, Adobe, Target, Intel, Boeing, UnitedHealthcare, Disney, and AT&T—has become outdated. In today’s era defined by relentless innovation and the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence, even these established giants face unprecedented challenges that undermine their stability. Let’s look at some recent performance: Nike experienced a […]
The Innovation Gap: How Active Management Outpaces Index Funds
Index funds transformed investing by offering broad, low-cost market exposure. But their reliance on market-cap weighting means they focus on today’s largest, often mature companies—missing the explosive growth of tomorrow’s innovators. Disruptive innovation arises from smaller, agile firms creating new markets or fundamentally transforming existing ones. These companies typically fly under the radar of index […]