Why InnerWorkings Shares Tumbled

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

What: Shares of InnerWorkings (NASDAQ: INWK  ) were falling apart today, dropping as much as 25% after the promotional specialist cut its full-year guidance ahead of its first-quarter report.

So what: InnerWorkings, which provides printed and promotional materials for businesses, said that it was trimming its 2013 to revenue outlook to a range of $900 million to $930 million, down from a previous range of $930 million to $960 million, and revising EPS guidance to $0.45-$0.50 from a previously projected range of $0.57-$0.61. InnerWorkings said the lower guidance was due to a change in management at a large client, and its decision to do some of its business with one of InnerWorkings' competitors.

Now what: Even with the drop in revenue and profit expectations, InnerWorkings still sees EPS increasing by 10% to 22% this year. Today's drop may be hard to stomach for shareholders, but the loss of the client doesn't point to any other structural weaknesses in the company. Its recent acquisition of DB Studios should provide an additional growth outlet. At this point, there seems to be no good reason to sell.

Stay up to date on Innerworkings. Add the company to your Watchlist by clicking here.  

Drivers Saved Billions on Gas Last Year; '15 Could Be Huge

Tony Dejak/APRegular gas is advertised for $1.94 a gallon at a gas station in Cleveland. NEW YORK -- The price of gasoline fell below $2 a gallon last week in two states, Missouri and Oklahoma. That's the first time gas has fallen that low since 2009. The price has declined overall by $1.06 in the past 95 days, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report, and by $1.38 a gallon since June. The price decline in oil (at $51 a barrel) and gasoline this week has been a savings bonanza for drivers. According to AAA: The current national average for a gallon of gasoline is $2.28, giving consumers savings of 11 cents a gallon compared with a week earlier, and 49 cents a gallon in the past 30 days compared with the month before. American drivers also saved $1.02 from Jan. 1, 2014, to Thursday. Drivers saved $14 billion last year compared with 2013, according to AAA. Compared with 2012, consumers saved $22 billion. On a per-household basis, Americans saved $115 each from lower gas prices in 2014. "U.S. drivers ended the year on a high-note with gas prices plummeting over the last few months," AAA spokesman Avery Ash says. "Cheaper gas prices have helped to improve the economy by boosting both consumer confidence and disposable income." The high point for gasoline prices last year was April 28, when the national average stood at $3.70 a gallon; the lowest point was Dec. 31, when the average gallon of gas hit $2.26. On a geographic basis, it really paid to drive in the South, with South Carolina, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas all ranking among the year's lowest average gasoline prices. Hawaii had the highest average ($4.16, compared with $3.34 in South Carolina), with California, Connecticut and New York drivers also seeing higher prices than the rest of the country. AAA expects gas prices to remain relatively low this year, although there are no guarantees. This year promises to provide "much bigger savings to consumers as long as crude oil remains relatively cheap," Ash says. "It would not be surprising for U.S. consumers to save $50 billion to $75 billion on gasoline in 2015 if prices remain low."

A Radical Cure for the Ills of Payday Lending: Transparency

Getty Images There is no force greater than a reasonably free market economy, but it can only exist if: Companies compete for your business. In other words, there is more than one choice. (No monopolies allowed.) Consumers have the ability to compare, ditch and switch. They can, with a little effort, understand the true cost of competing products, make informed decisions, and change suppliers easily. Companies producing products that no one wants to buy can fail. They will go out of business, and the people who invested in the business will lose their investments. When consumers have choice and transparency, and when companies are never too big to fail, amazing things can happen. The market will be brutal to companies without a compelling product or value. And it will disproportionally reward those who create real value for consumers. Unfortunately, the forces of the market usually don't reach consumer financial products. But, when true markets are created, the results can be dramatic. Price Comparison Sites Work Amazingly Well in U.K. In the United Kingdom, price comparison websites have revolutionized financial services, particularly auto insurance. If you want to buy auto insurance, you can visit a website, enter a few pieces of personal information and immediately see real personalized quotes from most major auto insurance companies. These are not estimates based upon public records or reverse-engineered guesses based upon the clever work of a computer scientist. The auto insurance companies share their pricing information with the price comparison websites. Thus, all three conditions of the market are met. Consumers can go to one website and see the cost of the products being offered. It is very easy to compare, ditch and switch online. And no auto insurance company has a handout from the government. If they don't compete for business, they will fail. Most importantly, the price comparison websites show the cheapest products first, not the products that pay the highest commissions. To be the top recommendation, you have to be offering the best price. Auto Insurance Premiums Have Fallen 30 Percent -- Over There And the result? Since 2011, auto insurance premiums have dropped by more than 30 percent. In the last 12 months, auto insurance premiums dropped a staggering 19.3 percent. How can prices keep going down? The pressure of the market is forcing companies to innovate. They are improving their underwriting models. They are investing in better fraud detection and claims handling processes. But they are doing all of this to lower premiums so that they can stay alive, not because they plan on making more money. The market is forcing them to compete. And it is brutal. Compare the U.K. market to the U.S. auto insurance market, where insurance premiums are generally increasing. One website, www.leaky.com, tried to bring transparency to the auto insurance market. Not surprisingly, the auto insurance companies were not interested in transparency. In fact, the company received a cease-and-desist order every two months of its existence from insurance companies trying to stop it. Eventually, fighting the litigation became too much, and the startup had to shut down its product. Think about what that means to you: Big insurance companies sued a tiny company into oblivion solely because they don't want you to know how much their products cost. And the auto insurance companies are still fighting hard to ensure that it remains difficult for consumers to compare, ditch and switch. And Now Consider Payday Loans Thanks to true price comparison websites, the U.K. consumer has enjoyed ever-reducing insurance premiums, ever-increasing low-rate balance-transfer durations (you can now borrow at 0 percent for 34 months in the U.K.) and ever-lower personal loan interest rates (with excellent credit, it is easy to get a 5.1 percent interest rate). Regulators there have taken note and would like to unleash the power of the market on one of the worst corners of financial services: Payday loans. As the Guardian reported last week, the competition regulator is going to force payday lenders to share their pricing information with price comparison websites. Payday lenders offer short-term loans to consumers who have no other options. On average, payday lenders charge between $15 to $20 for every $100 that you borrow for 14 days. But the real money is made when borrowers roll over the loan. When the debt comes due in 14 days, the borrower has two choices. They can pay back the $100 borrowed or pay another $15 to $20 to extend the loan for another 14 days. According the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, 80 percent of borrowers roll over their loans. Hidden fees can often add up to far more than amount of the loan. Short-term loans turn into long-term loans, loaded with fees, generating annual percentage rates in excess of 1,000 percent. Payday Lenders Scheme Around the Rules Attempts to regulate payday lending have been a complete failure, on both sides of the Atlantic. Payday lenders are clever and find ways of getting around every rule designed to hem them in. In fact, a number of U.S. payday lenders are incorporated on Indian reservations to avoid regulatory oversight completely. The payday loan model remains: Hide the true cost of borrowing. Don't share pricing up-front, making it difficult to compare. Keep people in debt forever, by making it "cheaper" to extend, rather than pay off the loan. But rather than trying to write new rules, which payday lenders will find their way around, we should consider unleashing the power of the market. Imagine if payday lenders had to share all of their pricing model with price comparison websites. Consumers who need cash could go to a single website and see how much it would actually cost to borrow the money until the loan is completely paid off. Remember the most important part of a price comparison website: the person with the lowest price almost always wins. Financial services are a commodity. So, if payday lender A has a 1,000 percent APR, and lender B has a 990 percent APR, then all of the business would shift to lender B. Lender A would see a dramatic drop in business, and would have to respond. Payday lenders could drop their prices by 90 percent and still make great profits. But they don't drop their prices because they don't have to. Forcing transparency on the payday lending market could drive real change. Consumers Would Benefit on Other Products The ability of the price comparison business model to transform financial services inspired me to leave the U.K. and move back to the U.S., where I created MagnifyMoney.com. I believe that complete price transparency quickly rewards companies with the best product, rather than the biggest marketing budget. For example, we have a balance transfer marketplace where PenFed (a credit union that anyone can join) usually takes the top spot. It is there because it has the best product (you can move your debt from other credit cards to PenFed and pay only 4.99 percent for 48 months, with no fee), not because it has the biggest marketing budget. When banks that are too big to fail aren't forced to compete based upon price, consumers lose. We have a lot to learn from the dominance of easy-to-use price comparison websites in the U.K., and I look forward to the day when banks, payday lenders and insurers are racing to drop prices in an effort to survive.

Managed to get that raise or promotion? Fantastic -- now don't go out there and spend it all immediately. In classic "keeping up with the Joneses" fashion, too many of us see an increase in salary or a sudden windfall (like an inheritance) as an excuse to take our lifestyle up a notch. We buy bigger houses than we need, get the latest gadgets even though ours work just fine,and spring for fancy steak dinners just because we can.

Mike Khouw's GoPro Inc Trade

CNBC Options Action's Mike Khouw said on the show that he wants to take a long position in GoPro Inc (NASDAQ: GPRO) and he wants to use options to do so.

He explained that the stock is trading at 10 times sales and it has a market cap of $10 billion. Judging on these parameters it looks expensive, but it has been so volatile that anything is possible. Khouw explained that his trade is not based on a historical performance of the stock because there is only a couple of months of data. It is all about the future of GoPro Inc's business.

The simple way to make a bullish bet in this name is to buy the January 82.5 call option for $6.70. The breakeven for this trade is at $89.20 and it is very important to use limit orders because the bid ask spread is really wide.

Posted-In: Mike Khouw Options ActionCNBC Options Markets Media Trading Ideas

© 2014 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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Select Comfort Corp (SCSS) Earnings Report: Will Investors Sleep Well? MFRM & TPX

The Q2 2014 earnings report for mattress stock Select Comfort Corp (NASDAQ: SCSS), a potential peer or competitor of other mattress players like Mattress Firm Holding Corp (NASDAQ: MFRM) and Tempur Sealy International Inc (NYSE: TPX), is due out on Wednesday after the market closes. Aside from the Select Comfort Corp earnings report, it should be said that the estimated release date for the Mattress Firm Holding Corp Q2 2014 earnings report is the the week of September 4th while the estimated date for the Tempur Sealy International Inc Q2 2014 earnings report is the week of July 21st. And while the last earnings report from Select Comfort Corp did not cause shares to move much, shares plunged 19% in January as preliminary fourth quarter results reignited concerns over growth going forward. This came after a 25% plunge after an October earnings report badly missed expectations.

What Should You Watch Out for With the Select Comfort Corp Earnings Report?

First, here is a quick recap of Select Comfort Corp's recent earnings history from Yahoo! Finance:

Earnings HistoryJun 13Sep 13Dec 13Mar 14

EPS Est	0.24	0.43	0.15	0.32
EPS Actual	0.18	0.36	0.12	0.31
Difference	-0.06	-0.07	-0.03	-0.01
Surprise %	-25.00%	-16.30%	-20.00%	-3.10%

 

Back in mid April, Select Comfort Corp reported a 7% first quarter net sales increase to $276 million, operating income decreased to $25.8 million from $35.2 million in the first quarter of 2013 and earnings per diluted share of $0.31 verses $0.41 on an as-adjusted basis (excluding CEO transition benefit). Select Comfort Corp was also expecting full-year 2014 earnings per diluted share to approximate full-year 2013 adjusted earnings per diluted share of $1.07 with this outlook assuming mid- to high-single-digit total revenue growth and the addition of 20 to 30 net new stores during the year.

This time around and according to the Yahoo! Finance analyst estimates page, the consensus expects revenue of $223.74M and EPS of $0.14 - down from EPS of $0.16 expected ninety days ago.

On the news front and in late May, Piper Jaffray said April sales for the mattresses industry increased 3% year-over-year according to ISPA. They see these numbers as in-line to slightly better than anticipated but they continue to favor Mattress Firm Holding Corp and Tempur Sealy International Inc in the mattress space.

What do the Select Comfort Corp Charts Say?

The latest technical chart for Select Comfort Corp shows that after taking two big hits late last year, the stock has slowly clawed back to higher levels:

However and since the end of the recession, Select Comfort Corp has been a real outperformer plus Mattress Firm Holding Corp and Tempur Sealy International Inc have also put in respectable performances:

The technical charts for Mattress Firm Holding Corp and Tempur Sealy International Inc also show uptrends albeit the latter has produced a multiple top:

What Should Be Your Next Move?

Investors might want to review what happened last October and again at the beginning of this year to see whether they will sleep comfortably going into another Select Comfort Corp earnings report. Then again, perhaps the worst is over and there could be some upside if there is a positive surprise.  

Let's Double Our Money… with a Little Help from the Greatest Analyst Who Never Lived

Editor's Note: As you'll see, Bill is a big Sherlock Holmes fan. That doesn't surprise us at all; Bill's a keen analyst himself, and his own sleuthing has led us to some spectacular profits. Even now, he's tracked down a hidden "back door" for regular investors to hit it big on the Alibaba IPO. Today, he's "teamed up" with the legendary detective to discover a sector with triple-digit gain potential. The game's afoot! Here's Bill...

I've been a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes ever since my Dad introduced me to the fabled detective when I was 10 or 11 and living near Pittsburgh back in the early 1970s.

And two of my favorite stories are The Final Problem and The Adventure of the Empty House.

In The Final Problem, Holmes has finally beaten his nemesis, Prof. James Moriarty, setting the brilliant villain and his gang up for arrest by Scotland Yard.

With the tough work done (and the need to steer clear of the criminals being rounded up by Scotland Yard), Holmes and friend Dr. John Watson head to the Continent for a literal "getaway" vacation. But Moriarty eludes the police dragnet and follows Holmes to Switzerland, cornering him alone on a narrow shelf overlooking Reichenbach Falls...

When Watson arrives later, he finds churned-up earth and a hastily jotted note from Holmes - which Moriarty had "courteously" permitted him to write in advance of the "final discussion of those questions which lie between us."

Holmes' fans know about the premature call that happened next, but what isn't obvious is that it can help us make a killing in the markets...

To Watson, what transpired after Holmes penned his note was obvious:

"An examination by experts leaves little doubt that a personal contest between the two men ended, as it could hardly fail to end in such a situation, in their reeling over, locked in each other's arms," Watson wrote. "Any attempt at recovering the bodies was absolutely hopeless, and there, deep down in that dreadful caldron of swirling water and seething foam, will lie for all time the most dangerous criminal and the foremost champion of the law of their generation."

In a final lament, Watson said that Holmes would always be "the best and wisest man whom I have ever known."

In The Adventure of the Empty House, Holmes stunned his old friend Watson by seeming to "return from the dead." As if that weren't enough, Holmes also cracked a huge murder case and captured Col. Sebastian Moran - an exceptionally dangerous criminal and last member of the Moriarty gang to still be at large.

As Mark Twain would later say about a similar situation involving himself, the reports of Holmes' death were an exaggeration.

I'm relating this tale for a reason: Analysts have similarly "closed the book" on a particular portion of the global tech sector.

And we believe it's created a very nice profit opportunity for folks who are willing to dig for the "real story."

The focus of this "premature obituary" is the software industry.

A Prescient "Call"

Traditionalist tech investors have long assessed the sector's profit potential by looking at sales of personal computers. Historically, an uptick in PC sales was almost always ignited by the "upgrade cycle" that accompanied the introduction of a higher-speed chip or new software operating system.

But PC sales have been slowing - thanks to the zooming popularity of smartphones and tablet computers.

Like Watson, investors looked at the churned-up ground surrounding the PC sector and assumed that the drop in PC sales meant that chip and software sales must've also plunged off the cliff and into the abyss.

But, like Watson, those investors were wrong.

Since January 2013, when I predicted a rebound in the semiconductor sector, we've brought you about a dozen chip-related profit recommendations. And if you'll pardon the cliché, folks who've followed them have made a killing. Those winners included such peak-gain returns as:

291% on Micron Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: MU), recommended on Valentine's Day 2013 at $8.08 a share. It turned out to be quite a gift: Micron has traded as high as $31.60, and analysts are calling for it to zoom even higher.

176.5% on NXP Semiconductors NV (Nasdaq: NXPI), which we'd recommended in May 2012 at $23.40 a share, and then re-recommended a number of times thereafter. Shares of the near-field-communications (NFC) chipmaker hit a new lifetime high of $64.69 this month and are still 168% higher than when we first told you about them.

120% on Ambarella Inc. (Nasdaq: AMBA), recommended on Aug. 8 at $16.60. The stock is still up 60% from where we recommended it, and we believe it could get a nice boost from the looming IPO of extreme sports camera maker GoPro Inc.

And 74% on Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (Nasdaq: AMD), recommended early last January at $2.67. The stock is still up 61%.

A more recent recommendation was the SPDR S&P Semiconductor (ETF) (NYSE Arca: XSD), an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that tries to reflect the performance of the Standard & Poor's Semiconductor Select Industry Index. The fund is already up 11.2% since the April 7 "Buy" call.

Now we believe it's time to take a look at the software sector.

And like our earlier semiconductor call, our push into software goes against the grain.

Avoiding the Chasm

A new report by market researcher IDC says that PC sales dropped 4.4% in the first quarter. It's just the latest decline in that once powerful industry.

For all of 2013, IDC said that PC shipments dropped 10% on a year-over-year basis - a result that fulfilled the researcher's earlier prediction that 2013 would represent "the most severe yearly contraction on record" for the PC market.

"The PC market again came in very close to expectations, but unfortunately failed to significantly change the trajectory of growth," said Loren Loverde, the IDC vice president who tracks worldwide PC shipments. "Total shipments have now declined for seven consecutive quarters, and even the holiday shopping season was unable to inspire a turn in consumer spending."

Indeed, with the full-year numbers in the books, market researcher Gartner Inc. referred to 2013 as "the worst decline in PC market history."

It's almost enough to make you write off any software-related investments.

But don't make that kind of "Final Problem" erroneous assumption.

Michael Robinson, the resident tech expert here at Money Map Press, says software is showing signs of life.

Real life.

"With a long-term decline in PC sales - one, in fact, that reaches all the way back to at least 2012 - many of the big-money guys on Wall Street are writing off software, too," Michael told me during one of our late-night confabs last week. "On the surface, Bill, the logic makes sense: If people are buying fewer computers, they'll need fewer accounting, sales management, and word-processing packages."

As it turns out, the churned-up ground around the PC sector doesn't mean the software business has plunged into Reichenbach Falls. Like Sherlock Holmes, software found a way to escape - and even emerge victorious.

A recent report by Gartner says the software industry scored $407.3 billion in sales last year. Thus, at a time when many on Wall Street were gloomy about software, sales actually advanced by nearly 5%. And that more than made up for the roughly 10% decline in PC sales that IDC says the industry suffered in 2013.

As analysts discovered, while the consumer software market (meaning PCs) was weak, the commercial market was pretty strong.

Expect that particular "dynamic" to continue in the software sector as Big Data, Cloud Computing, and the Internet of Everything (IoE) (and its subset "machine-to-machine" communications, or M2M) drive demand for new kinds of software packages, Michael told me.

"It's a new era in technology, with a confluence of multiple powerful new trends," he said. "That represents a substantive change... and with change comes opportunity."

Just as we did with semiconductors, we're going to start looking for profit opportunities in the software sector.

Michael suggests that we start with the SPDR S&P Software & Services (ETF) (NYSE Arca: XSW).

"This is an all-encompassing exchange-traded fund (ETF) that gives us a broad play on some very intriguing companies," said Michael, who edits the Radical Technology Profits and Nova-X Report advisory services here at Money Map Press. "XSW invests in firms that are involved in e-commerce, social-networking, data-processing, Internet software, cloud-computing, and Big Data. It holds roughly 175 stocks in its portfolio. That big number and its diversity of holdings are part of what I really like about XSW - software in general, and this ETF in particular, touch a wide swath of the global-tech ecosystem."

We're also going to look for companies with unique competencies.

That's just what we did earlier this year with our May 23, 2013, recommendation of Splunk Inc. (Nasdaq: SPLK), an emerging player in the area of Big Data analytics. We spotted Splunk's strong position in a new business area and predicted that would pave the way for a strong rally. The stock zoomed nearly 140% before it got tripped up by short-term earnings issues (illustrating, once again, why we're advocates of "trailing stops").

Now we like Blackbaud Inc. (NasdaqGS: BLKB).

Charleston, S.C.-based Blackbaud focuses on such nonprofits as research foundations and universities. The company has 29,000 clients who use its software to manage fundraising, accounting, and online marketing and payment services.

With a market cap of $1.6 billion, Blackbaud has operating margins of 11% and a 20% return on equity (ROE). Its most recent quarterly earnings zoomed 43%.

Analysts right now have a one-year consensus target price of $44 on Blackbaud shares - 25.7% above the current share price of $34.99.

In fact, Zacks Equity Research gave Blackbaud its top No. 1 "Buy" ranking. I tend to watch what Zacks does (versus other stock-research services): Since 1986, Zacks' No. 1-ranked stocks have generated a market-thrashing average annual gain of 26%.

I'm looking at a couple other software plays, too - including one that could benefit from an additional catalyst: a corporate spin-off.

When Holmes reappeared in The Final Problem, Watson demanded to know how his friend had ever escaped the Reichenbach chasm.

As Holmes recounted, "well, then, about that chasm. I had no serious difficulty in getting out of it, for the very simple reason that I never was in it."

Instead, in an effort to fool the rest of the world, Holmes managed to scale the cliffs above him and hide until the hubbub died down. Then he made good his escape - only to reappear at the most opportune time.

Like Holmes, software avoided the finality of the chasm. And like Holmes, the sector has reappeared as a big profit opportunity... at a most opportune time.

And we're going to keep finding the best profit plays for you.

Mass Affluent Investors Need Reality Check on Risk, Expectations

A new study by AssetMark, a consultant to independent financial advisors, finds critical gaps in knowledge, expectations and communication between advisors and their mass affluent clients.

Nearly half of investors in the study said they would risk 25% to 100% of their portfolios for commensurate returns. At the same time, the vast majority said they were moderate to low risk takers.

The annual Mass Affluent Investor Risk Barometer examines investor sentiment and the role advisors play in helping them negotiate risk and reward tradeoffs.

Koski Research conducted the online study on behalf of AssetMark from April 16 to 24 of 501 mass affluent investors, those with investable assets between $250,000 and $1 million. Respondents were age 30 to 70, worked with a financial advisor and were primary or shared decision makers regarding investments.

“We believe it’s important for advisors to educate their clients and talk to them about the need to be realistic when balancing risk and reward,” AssetMark president and chief executive Charles Goldman said in a statement. 

“Our research indicates that too many investors overestimate their ability to cope with significant losses.”

The study included these findings:

“We found that investors expect more from their portfolios than is realistic and this can cause some dissatisfaction,” said Zoe Brunson, AssetMark’s director of investment strategies, said in the statement.

Brunson noted that 48% of investors had reported that the size of their portfolio, on average, had increased 14.2% in the last year, and were unhappy with their year-to-date returns.

“It’s critical that advisors set the right expectations with their clients,” Brunson said. “Focus on building a portfolio to meet client goals rather than chasing last year’s winner. Aim to be balanced across strategies that do well in rising markets and strategies that also do well in falling markets.”

The study findings were reinforced by advisor sentiment, Goldman said. More than half of the advisors polled at AssetMark’s recent premier consultant meetings said ensuring that clients understood the tradeoff between risk and reward was the largest challenge they faced in meeting client expectations this year.

“Uncovering the specific issues where clients most need guidance and understanding investors’ varying perspectives on risk help advisors strengthen their relationships by instilling confidence and clarity.”

Middle-Class Retirement ‘Under Siege’: IMCA 2014

The middle class is “under siege” from unemployment, mounting debt and home values that have yet to recover, Marcia Wagner, managing director of the Wagner Law Group, said Monday at the IMCA conference.

The Obama administration has recognized its need to “buttress” the middle class to protect their retirement and is making efforts to incentivize savings and improve returns, she said.

“Given the power of inertia, policymakers are betting big,” she said. Some strategies like automatic enrollment are already in place, but while utilization is growing, deferral rates are holding tight around 3%. Furthermore, those policies are usually used for new hires. Sponsors should examine adopting re-enrollment and reallocation strategies to include older employees who have old election rates, she said.

There’s also a “heavy emphasis on automatic IRAs,” Wagner said. These would rely on “R-bonds,” which Wagner described as “a new type of government debt just for automatic IRAs.” These types of plans typically have a 3% default contribution rate and use a Roth structure, and default investments are designated by the government.

Republicans and Democrats alike are unhappy with some aspects of automatic IRAs, Wagner said. Broadly speaking, many Republicans find the mandate unconstitutional, while Democrats dislike how much money would be funneled to Wall Street, Wagner said.

Whatever plans end up looking like, Wagner said “automation is the nomenclature of the day.”

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have put an emphasis on returns by focusing on transparency and fees, Wagner said. Fiduciary “means philosophically to make participants educated consumers,” she said. Recent disclosure rules like 408(b)2 and 404(a)5 do just that. Wagner joked that most advisors might think disclosures go straight to the “circular file,” but she said that “there is a minority of participants and sponsors who read disclosures.” Competitors are reading them too, and even if that results in only minor changes to fees, they can have a big impact on participants later on.

Wagner added that fiduciary proposals are “evolving and harmonizing between and amongst the DOL, SEC and FINRA.”

One example of the ways government is trying to “buttress” retirement outcomes is in focusing on decumulation as much as accumulation. “The government is trying to get people to think in terms of annuities,” Wagner said. “They’re eliminating the regulatory underbrush inhibiting getting annuities on the lineup” of ways to take distributions.

A proposal from the IRS calls for use of a longevity annuity, which is really just a deferred annuity, Wagner said. It begins paying after the expiration of the owner’s mortality table, so it provides income for later in life. It would provide an exception to required minimum distribution rules for longevity annuity investment.

Wagner noted that target-date funds didn’t take off until they became the preferred qualified default investment alternative. If annuities became the default of choice, though, she said it would “kill the QDIA market.” Doing so would require a change to the Department of Labor’s Interpretive Bulletin 96-1, which lays out the difference between education and guidance. “People aren’t going to want to become fiduciaries to talk about annuities,” Wagner said. Wagner also talked about the DOL’s proposal for lifetime income disclosures. The proposal requires a quarterly statement of projected monthly income assuming a 7% return and 3% annual contribution increase, and using a 3% discount rate to convert future dollars into current dollars.

Under those assumptions, a 50-year-old plan participant with $125,000 in 2014 would end up with $500,000 in 2029, but that would fall to $321,000 after the discount rate. That leaves the participant with an estimated $1,800 per month.

It could be the “beginning of massive lawsuits if this becomes law,” Wagner said.

The “real crux of change” is what we want for retirement and what we can afford, she said. There are two kinds of debate to that end: tax reform and pension system reform.

Wagner reminded attendees that plan limitations can increase or decrease based on societal need, and have done so in the past as with the Tax Reform Act of 1986. That act increased revenue, but Wagner said it “took a solid decade for the 401(k) industry to recover.”

E. Thomas Foster, national retirement spokesperson for MassMutual’s Retirement Services Division, spoke as well. “To be successful, you have to be a student of the game,” he told attendees, encouraging them to “take advantage of what the law allows now” in retirement planning.

He said he encourages advisors to “be more holistic in growing your practice and look at accumulation and decumulation as a whole.” He said the common differentiators — being good at plan design, well-versed on fiduciary requirements or fee disclosure — are no longer good enough. They’re all part of the “sea of sameness” and advisors have to redefine their value proposition.

To do that, advisors need to be able to describe what they do and how they do it, but also why they do it, he said.

The single biggest risk for advisors, Wagner said in response to an attendee’s question, is that “plan documentation is old and cold. Make sure you have a plan document.” 

Another attendee asked about the probability of Social Security moving to a means-tested formula. Foster said such a move would be a “bait and switch.” Wagner agreed, adding, “Desperate times call for desperate measures, and that’s a function of desperate we are.” Social Security benefits may not be enough to live on by themselves, but Wagner said “some people actually do rely on” those benefits. If they were means-tested, it could “drag back to middle-class people who have clawed their way into the lower wealthy.”

Yahoo! Builds Its Own YouTube

This sounds like a suicide mission: struggling portal site takes on 600-pound video gorilla. Mayhem ensues. Or maybe not.

Tech website re/code reported on Friday that Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is working on a plan to build a competitor to the ubiquitous YouTube franchise that Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) paid $1.65 billion for in late 2006. Just a guess, but Yahoo is likely to spend a lot more than that to get a competitive product out the door.

Still, the company and its CEO Marissa Meyer seem to be attacking in the right way. According to the reports, Yahoo is using the promise of more cash to lure the star talent and the popular YouTube channels away from Google and into the Yahoo fold. The interloper is trying to take advantage of the complaints by content providers that they don't make enough money on YouTube.

That may be true, but the only way Yahoo can fix that is by paying more — probably a whole lot more. Yahoo is apparently telling video makers that it can offer better deals than YouTube either through better advertising revenue or guaranteed ad rates for the makers' programming. Yahoo is also offering other inducements, including promotional space on the site's heavily trafficked home page.

Yahoo has another problem. YouTube is not only the world's leading streaming video site, but it is also the world's leading music streaming site. Pandora Media Inc. (NYSE: P), Spotify, Rdio, and the rest pale in comparison. How will Yahoo steal that business? Only at great cost.

At the very least, to dislodge the YouTube giant will require a massive investment in popular talent. Katie Couric's addition to Yahoo's stable was a start, but the company is going to need to do a deal with someone like Howard Stern at an enormous contract rate. Stern got $500 million from Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) in his original five-year deal and a similar deal for the next five years through the end of 2015.  Stern will be available relatively soon, but he won't come cheap. Just sayin'.

When China's Alibaba finally comes public, Yahoo stands to gain a warchest of $37 billion if it sells its entire stake. It will have the cash to spend on going up against YouTube, but YouTube is not without resources of its own. Google is sitting on cash and short-term investments of around $50 billion.

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Lululemon stock suffers as outlook lowered

Shares of Lululemon Athletica tumbled 11.7% Thursday after the yoga apparel maker lowered its sales outlook for the year even as it reported higher third quarter earnings.

Shares fell $7.96 to close at $60.39.

The Vancouver-based company, which has been under fire this year for product snafus and controversial statements made by its founder, said it estimates revenue for the year to be between $1.605 billion and $1.61 billion. In August, it predicted yearly revenue in the range of $1.625 billion to $1.635 billion.

Earnings for the year are now expected to be between $1.94 and $1.96 per share vs. the previous forecast of $1.94 to $1.97.

Earlier this week, Lululemon's founder Chip Wilson said he would step down from his role as non-executive chairman of the board prior to the company's meeting in June 2014. His decision to follows a statement Wilson made during a TV interview that some women's bodies "just don't actually work" for his company's products, as thighs rubbing over time will cause pilling -- the bunching up of fabric on the clothes.

In March, Lululemon pulled its popular Luon black yoga pants from stores following customers' complaints that they were too sheer. With new products in stores, customers continued to complain about sheerness, as well as holes and seams that were coming apart after a few months of wear.

Lululemon also said Thursday that its net income for the quarter ended Nov. 3 rose 15% to $66.1 million. It earned 45 cents per share, beating analysts' estimate of 41 cents. Revenue for the quarter rose 20% from a year ago to $379.9 million.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Obama's Fixer-Upper Website Races to Catch Up

Karen Bleier, AFP/Getty Images WASHINGTON -- It looks as though President Barack Obama's fickle health insurance website is finally starting to put up some respectable sign-up numbers, but its job only seems to have gotten harder. Two months in and out of the repair shop have left significantly less time to fulfill the White House goal of enrolling 7 million people by the end of open enrollment on March 31. Signups were just over 100,000 nationally as of the end of October. The 36 states served by the federal government's website accounted for a paltry one-fourth of that, fewer than 27,000 people. But officials now say an additional 29,000 people enrolled through the revamped HealthCare.gov in just two days at the start of this week, despite heavy volume that not long ago would have caused the system to lock up. HealthCare.gov is the online portal to subsidized private health insurance for people who don't have job-based coverage. Though it's too early to say whether the corner is being turned, Obama is inviting consumers to give the website a second chance. Here's a look at the changes you can expect: Speed and Availability Independent testers question the blazing Internet speeds claimed by techies at the Health and Human Services Department but say there's been noticeable progress. "The trend is in the right direction ... but there are still things they can do to make the user experience better," said Michael Smith, a vice president of engineering at Compuware Corp. (CPWR), which helps companies monitor the technical performance of their websites. As of Thursday morning, the number of states where consumers are experiencing unacceptably long wait times had been cut in half, down to 13 from 26 states in late October. Compuware defines "unacceptable" as more than 8 seconds average response time to load the home page. The government claims a response time of less than 1 second. But Smith says that is likely being measured from computers with fast Internet connections and doesn't account for the experience of consumers with less than ideal access, which is incorporated in his company's testing. HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters acknowledged: "As with any website, the response times for individual consumers will vary depending on their computer's performance and the speed of their Internet." Compuware says availability -- a measure of consumers' success accessing the site -- is up to 98 percent, close to the standard for commercial websites. Window-Shopping Many consumers were puzzled and frustrated when the federal website went live because it would not let them browse health plans without first setting up an account. That's the opposite of how e-commerce generally works. Most websites ask consumers to open an account after they're ready to purchase. The flaw drove many people to an accounts creation page that turned out to be riddled with bugs and contributed to the system's early woes. On Monday, HHS announced the deployment of a window-shopping function that lets prospective customers see plans and prices in their area, including previously unavailable details such as deductibles and cost-sharing, as well as provider networks. Reset Button People who got stuck in the system can now zap away their old applications and start over. To do that, you log into your account, select the application in progress and hit "remove." You have to follow that by closing and reopening your Web browser. Then you log back in and start a new application. The reset process may not be entirely foolproof because HHS advises consumers to reach out to the call center at 800-318-2596 if they have trouble. Orderly Lines To help stave off problems during periods of high user volume, the website now has a queuing system. Consumers can request email notifications of when is a good time to come back. The feature kicked in this week as people flooded back to check out the revamped website. The site can now handle 50,000 simultaneous users. Each visitor spends an average of 20 to 30 minutes on the site. In theory, the site will support more than 800,000 consumer visits a day. The big spikes in traffic are still to come. Expect that to happen after the middle of this month, since Dec. 23 is the last day that people can apply for coverage that will take effect Jan. 1. Even heavier volume is likely toward the end of open enrollment March 31, as procrastinators jump in. Confident that the site is stable, the government is emailing people who got stuck in the system and inviting them back. Still, reaching the goal of 7 million sign-ups seems like a tall order. The government's initial projections estimated that 1.2 million people would have enrolled by the end of November, and the number is likely to be only a fraction of that. And the March 31 deadline doesn't mean that enrollment comes to a full stop. That's because under the law, people who experience a significant change in their life circumstances can still get coverage after the open enrollment period is over. Such changes include divorce, the birth of a child, loss of coverage, moving to another state or losing a job. Rick Curtis of the nonprofit Institute for Health Policy Solutions estimates that as many as 20 million people could become eligible for coverage later in 2014, though it's not clear how many of those would enroll. "About as many people will become eligible over the course of the year as are eligible now," Curtis said.

7 ways to keep holiday shoppers coming back

If you were fortunate, customers came surging in to your shop or café on Small Business Saturday or were clicking away at your e-commerce store on Cyber Monday.

I hope this holiday season brings you lots of customers.

COLUMN: Season of good tidings, great revenue
COLUMN: 9 tips for small-biz holiday success

But how do you make the most of your holiday small-business success? After all, you want your cash register ringing all year, not just when sleigh bells jingle.

Take heart. The holiday season is the perfect time to create new, long-lasting customers for your business — whether you have a shop or offer a service.

I've come up with eight ways to keep holiday customers coming back long after all the ornaments and tinsel have been packed away:

1. Build your mailing list. Every holiday customer has the potential to be a year 'round customer, but you have to work to make that happen.

Most important? You have to know who they are.

Think about creating packages for your product or service, such as a Massage of the Month Club.(Photo: Kamil Cwiklewski, Getty Images)

So do everything you can to capture holiday customers' names and contact information for your mailing list. Hold drawings for small giveaways and gifts.

Customers just need to drop their business cards or leave their names and e-mail addresses in a bowl. (Do make sure you let them know that they'll be added to your mailing list.)

Or leave a sign-up form beside the cash register. Place a prominent "sign up for our mailing list" link on your website.

Don't have a mailing list? Start one. Every name on your mailing list is a corporate asset.

2. Start or expand your newsletter. Once you have a mailing list, use ! it.

Send notices of special sales, new merchandise, new services and information that can help your customers.

Using an online service, newsletters are easy to manage. Very small businesses can use a service such as MailChimp for free.

3. Increase your social-media following. Just as you build your mailing list, you also should use the holidays to attract more followers to your social-media activities.

Prominently tell customers where they can find you on social media —Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, whatever. Run specials that are available only to those who "like" or follow you.

4. Create subscription products or services. Now is a great time to sell a year's worth of your product or service to keep customers coming back throughout 2014.

Instead of selling one product, see if you can turn it into a "of-the-month" club: Massage of the Month Club, Housecleaning of the Month Club, Lunch of the Month Club. Or try variations: quarterly oil changes, twice yearly pet sitting.

Whatever you sell, look for ways to create a recurring relationship with a customer.

5. Offer deals for 2014. Right now, while you're at your busiest, offer specials to be used only next year.

Customers can buy these as gifts or for themselves. For instance, hair salons are packed for the rest of the year but slow in January. Sell those spots now: You'll even out your workload and put money in your bank.

6. Sell gift cards or gift certificates. Gift cards bring back existing customers or attract new clients because many of the recipients never have been your customers before.

Encourage them to sign up for your newsletter or like your Facebook page.

7. Schedule a new year promotion. Last but not least, as the holidays wind down, start thinking of creative ways to keep people coming in even during the doldrums of late January and February.

Don't necessarily mark down your best merchandise, but you certainly can discount holiday goods and offer specials on servic! es that a! re less likely to be in demand the early part of the year.

Remember, if you sell a product, you'll likely to have some returns soon after the holidays. Make sure you schedule extra staff for the first week or so after Christmas specifically to handle returns.

Work hard on your customer service. Your goal is to create lifelong customers.

With a little planning and ingenuity, you can turn holiday customers into people who will be returning happily during March and June and October — not just when they're frantically looking for a present for Aunt Minnie.

Rhonda Abrams is president of The Planning Shop and publisher of books for entrepreneurs. Her most recent book is Entrepreneurship: A Real-World Approach. Register for Rhonda's free newsletter at PlanningShop.com. Twitter: @RhondaAbrams. Facebook: facebook.com/RhondaAbramsSmallBusiness.Copyright Rhonda Abrams 2013.