Feb 1, 2012
By Diana Britton
The European debt crisis and global economic uncertainty were the dark clouds hanging over the Investment Management Consultant Association’s conference in New York recently. ...
Jan 26, 2012
By Diana Britton
Raymond James Financial (NYSE: RJF) reported fiscal 2012 first quarter revenue fell four percent to $782.5 million, while earnings were down 18% to $67.3 million. ...
Jan 23, 2012
By John Aidan Byrne
Margin pressure, upheaval in advisory business models, lack of certainty in the market – most of the current trends in the wealth management industry can be traced back to the global financial crisis in 2008. Three years after the world fell apart, the industry is still adjusting to the aftershocks....
Jan 19, 2012
By Jerry Gleeson
Charles Schwab Corp. is still leading the race for advisor assets, but a muddled economic recovery is taking the steam out of its stride. ...
Jan 5, 2012
By Jerry Gleeson
After the volatility of 2011, forecasting has become a dicey business. A panel of experts at Prudential’s 2012 Global Economic and Retirement Outlook briefing today in Manhattan offered some tentative reasons to believe that better days are ahead, but cautioned that turbulence will persist this year....
Jan 1, 2012
By Diana Britton
Equities typically advance in the third year of a presidential cycle. If 2011 turns in sub-par returns, what should we expect in 2012?...
Jan 1, 2012
By Kristen French
Women FAs are in greater demand, but wirehouses have their work cut out for them. ...
Nov 15, 2011
By David Trainer
As one financial scandal follows another, it seems the good guys are having a tougher time catching the bad guys. Recent revelations about MF Global’s bankruptcy are reminders of how our regulatory and oversight systems seem to let whales pass through their nets...
Nov 9, 2011
By Diana Britton
With the chances of a recession increasing, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney has dialed back on risk assets in its portfolio, underweighting global equities, commodities and REITs, and boosting allocations to safe havens, such as cash, bonds and managed futures, the firm said during a press briefing Wednesday morning. ...
Nov 4, 2011
By Jerry Gleeson
The U.S. economy is poised for improvement, but a change in national leadership is key, Charles Schwab told an auditorium of financial advisors at San Francisco’s Moscone Center who had come for the Charles Schwab Corp.’s annual IMPACT convention. ...
Nov 1, 2011
By Diana Britton
While emerging market stocks have been touted for the last couple years as the investment du jour, the message at an Eaton Vance outlook event this morning was quite the contrary....
Oct 28, 2011
By Jerry Gleeson
How rattled were people in the heat of the 2008 financial crisis? Gibson Capital LLC founder and author Roger C. Gibson recalled being asked by three or four clients whether the S&P 500 would drop to zero. Perhaps it wasn’t a lot of people, he said, considering his practice served 100 investors; but Gibson knew that if just a few were asking about the prospect of such an extraordinary possibility, a lot more were quietly thinking about it....
Oct 10, 2011
By Susan Konig
As the market volatility that re-emerged this past August continues, advisors in your branch are likely feeling the kind of pain and anxiety they did at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. ...
Sep 1, 2011
By Diana Britton
Despite an opportunity to buy stocks on the cheap, retail investors still have a risk-adverse bias, according to recent fund flows. Year-to-date through July, investors have yanked $17.8 billion from equity mutual funds, with outflows of about $31.6 billion in July and $22.9 billion in June, according to the Investment Company Institute. Meanwhile, about $95.4 billion has flowed into taxable bond mutual funds through July, including inflows of $12 billion in June and $9.8 billion in July, ICI said....
Aug 16, 2011
By Charles Paikert
Despite stomach-churning market volatility and continuing economic uncertainty, the summer swoon of 2011 is still a far cry from the perilous plunge that shook the country in 2008, say wealth managers and family office executives....
Jun 10, 2011
By Jerry Gleeson
Financial advisors are considered an optimistic, if cranky, lot in the aggregate, but that sentiment was put to the test this week by bond guru William Gross, the keynote speaker at the annual Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago this week...
Jun 10, 2011
By Diana Britton
During Pershing’s INSITE 2011 conference in Hollywood, Fla., this week, Gordon Brown, the former prime minister of Great Britain, told attendees that Greece’s economic trouble is a European problem, not a Greek problem, and the only solution is to get all of Europe’s leaders together to address the three underlying causes. ...
Jun 9, 2011
By Diana Britton
It’s unlikely we’re headed for a double dip recession, but we are in a “sub cycle slowdown in a sustainable economic expansion,” said Richard Hoey, chief economist at BNY Mellon and the Dreyfus Corporation...
Jun 2, 2011
By Diana Britton
Advisors are expecting the summer doldrums to kick in for the stock market and the economy over the next few months, according to Rydex|SGI’s Advisor Confidence Index...
Jun 1, 2011
By Nate Wendler
The last decade has seen both the tech wreck and the housing bubble burst, leaving greater skepticism about financial institutions and a deeper interest in identifying “bubbles” amongst both the professional and investing public...
May 10, 2011
By Stan Luxenberg
Advisors don’t appreciate how cautious clients have become, said speakers at the Investment Company Institute’s recent general membership meeting in Washington yesterday. Despite two years of rising markets, clients continue to hold big amounts of cash...
May 9, 2011
By John Aidan Byrne
The economic threat from unsustainable U.S. national debt—over $14 trillion and counting—is the No.1 concern today for many of the nation's wealthiest families and individuals, according to a new report slated to be released later today by UBS Wealth Management Americas...
May 5, 2011
By Jerry Gleeson
Broker/dealer executives who speak at their national conventions often aim for a tone that rallies the troops, and the Raymond James Financial Services conference in Las Vegas this week followed the pattern—with one surprising exception during Chief Executive Dick Averitt’s address...
Apr 15, 2011
By Jerry Gleeson
Continued growth in client trading and fees helped drive profits at Charles Schwab Corp. to higher-than-expected levels for the first quarter, the company said today. Meanwhile, assets in its RIA unit, Schwab Advisor Services, reached a record $688.6 billion, up 10 percent year over year. Total assets at the nation’s largest discount broker rose to $1.65 trillion, also a record...
Apr 5, 2011
By Stan Luxenberg
Worried that interest rates could rise for years to come, some investors have been dumping their bonds. But the extreme bears are probably overreacting...
