Valle Egypt - Personal Story, Case Study

Kristin Hetzer has served as principal of Rolling Hills East, California’s Royal Palms Capital since 2005. In addition to her experience as a senior investment management executive, Kristin Hetzer is the author of the book Valle Egypt.

Released in 2020 by Covenant Books, Valle Egypt uses personal family details as a springboard for providing awareness and education on the subject of financial elder abuse. This highly emotional story includes the loss of a farm that had been in the family for 60 years.

Valle Egypt also serves as a legal case study with important components such as the waning mental capacity of an elderly parent, the questionable influence of that parent’s children, and the dereliction of fiduciary responsibilities on the behalf of legal trustees.

To help readers avoid many of the problems that it outlines in its narrative and case study, Valle Egypt provides them with an informative, preparatory tool kit. This tool kit helps readers navigate tricky issues of fiduciary duty and mental capacity through preventive measures such as estate planning and legal trusts.

Financial Elder Abuse & Breach

Kristin Hetzer is the senior portfolio manager for Royal Palms Capital LLC. During her career, she was designated a Chartered Market Technician by the CMT Association. Additionally, Kristin Hetzer has a strong interest in financial elder abuse, a topic about which she has written a book, "Valle Egypt".

Financial elder abuse consists of acts such as theft of property or assets that happen because the elder person cannot defend against it or has memory losses. Undue coercion or strong negative influence is also a form of financial elder abuse if it results in the loss of property or capital for the elder and benefits the influential party. Acts of financial elder abuse can be committed by anyone, from friends and neighbors, all the way to service providers or lawyers.

When an elderly person’s mental faculties start to decline, persons close to them are often given legal power to act on their behalf. Persons that get legal power on behalf of an elder person form a fiduciary relationship with them. Breaches of the fiduciary duty happen when the guardian or the person that has legal power on behalf of the elder does not act for the benefit of the elder. Breaches of fiduciary duty can be detected and proven if an elderly person changes their spending habits and starts withdrawing frequently from their accounts, makes excessive or irregular payments or gifts, or makes changes in their estate. These are just a few of many situations that might indicate a breach of fiduciary duty may have taken place.

Valle Egypt - Spreading Awareness

A California resident, Kristin Hetzer graduated from Hope College and holds a bachelor of arts degree with a major in biology. She is the senior portfolio manager of Royal Palms Capital, LLC. Kristin Hetzer also recently authored a book, "Valle Egypt", a non-fiction book focusing on the topic of financial elder abuse.

Valle Egypt was published by Covenant Books of Murrells Inlet in South Carolina. The book functions as a case study and is based on the personal family story of the author. The book’s goal is to increase awareness about financial elder abuse and ways for people to mitigate the problem should it ever happen to them or their close family members. It enables people to learn about fiduciary duty, legal trusts, and estate planning so that they can be more prepared when facing such a problem, and ideally prevent it from ever happening.

By reading the book, people can also better understand the consequences of financial elder abuse, and the story questions and directs attention to the mental capacity of an elder parent and the undue influence of children. The story and legal case also showcase just how an experienced lawyer can come to aid in a situation involving financial elder abuse.

Three Important Golf Etiquette Rules

Kristin Hetzer is a Palos Verdes, California-based finance executive who serves as principal at Royal Palms Capital, LLC. She holds designation as a Chartered Market Technician, Certified Financial Planner, and Certified Investment Management Analyst. Outside of her professional pursuits, Kristin Hetzer enjoys playing golf.

While golf can be a fun recreational activity for individuals of all ages, beginner players should familiarize themselves with the rules of the game in order to exhibit proper etiquette. Here are three things to keep in mind:

1. Players are required to mark their balls with an identifying symbol on the first tee box. This is to avoid confusion with other players when searching for their balls on the course.

2. Avoid slow play. A typical round should be around 4 hours. To ensure this, try and plan shots when approaching the ball, and take no more than 45 seconds between selecting a club and making a shot.

3. Repair ball marks and divots. Balls can often leave indents in the course, and these should be fixed with a penknife, tee, or special two-pronged ball mark repair tool. It's also important to replace divots in the ground and rake the sand after shots out of the bunker.

Hiking the White Point Nature Preserve

An experienced investment management executive, Kristin Hetzer serves as principal of Royal Palms Capital in the eastern San Pedro suburb of Rolling Hills East, California. When she isn’t working, Kristin Hetzer is an avid hiker.

Located at the southernmost tip of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the White Point Nature Preserve features a number of interconnecting trails that offer hiking loops that range from 1 to 2.5 miles. The focal point of this 102-acre park is Battery Bunker. Built in 1942 as a strategic World War II coastal defense site, this large artillery bunker has been out of commission since 1978.

The Preserve is also home to the best nature trail in the greater San Pedro region, according to the independent online hiking authority AllTrails. Accessible year-round, White Point Trail is a relatively easy loop trail that covers 1.3 miles of the White Point Nature Preserve. Among its other flora and fauna, the trail boasts a large number of wildflowers that attract hikers.

Investments and Wealth Institute Presents Behavioral Finance Week 2020

Kristin Hetzer has built a career as an investment management professional in the greater Los Angeles area. To complement her leadership at Royal Palms Capital, located in Rolling Hills Estates, Kristin Hetzer participates in professional organizations such as the Investments and Wealth Institute.

As part of its mission to enhance the skills of financial professionals, the Investments and Wealth Institute presented its second annual Behavioral Finance Week. Taking place September 7-13, 2020, the week aimed to bring attention to behavioral finance, a field that examines the role of psychological biases in financial behavior and markets.

The week’s proceedings included the Behavioral Finance Forum. The organization’s first online-only conference, the one-day event consisted of programming designed to help financial professionals develop an understanding of current topics in behavioral finance. Along with enjoying access to experts in the field, such as faculty members from the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, attendees had the opportunity to take part in networking and social activities.

Behavioral Finance Week also saw the Investments and Wealth Institute reveal the results of the BeFi Barometer 2020, a survey it commissioned alongside Charles Schwab Investment Management (CSIM) and Cerulli Associates. The highlights of the survey include the finding that 81 percent of financial professionals applied behavioral finance strategies with their clients in 2020, a jump of 10 percent year over year. As noted by Omar Aguilar, a chief investment officer at CSIM, behavioral finance is a particularly important tool in navigating clients through the unprecedented market conditions of today’s world. 

Investments and Wealth Institute Releases 2020 Investor Report

The Principal at Royal Palms Capital, LLC, Kristin Hetzer possesses expertise in investment management and security analysis. Kristin Hetzer has been a member of the Investment & Wealth Institute since 2000.

The Investments & Wealth Institute is an association of financial advisors and wealth managers committed to excellence and ethics. The organization, in partnership with the Toews Corporation, commissioned Absolute Engagement, a company that uses client feedback to design a client experience, in March 2020 to conduct an investor research study on the perceptions of their advisors and the steps they can take to keep their clients’ business.

The study revealed that although 90 percent of the respondents remain satisfied and positive that their advisors will help them earn high returns on investments, 44 percent have evaluated their advisors’ standing and contemplated turning to other advisors. This was a significant increase from the 2019 data, in which only 21 percent had considered changing advisors.

To resolve the confidence and satisfaction challenges that are affecting clients, the organization recommended using strategies based on its Exceptional Advisor Model, which combines advanced capabilities, personalized approach, exceptional service, expertise, meaningful guidance, and ethics. Doing so will enable advisors to find new opportunities to create more value for their clients and cement their advisor-client relationships.