News
In order to tap investor demand for alternative investments, ProShares is introducing eight exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that utilize leverage and short positions on key stock indices. The funds are o...
June was a record month for publicly offered ETFs. All in all, 42 new funds were added to the mix in one month’s time — an incredible feat, when you consider that Investment Company Institute data rev...
WisdomTree Investments entered the cutthroat ETF business with a bang on June 16, when the New York-based firm unveiled a family of 20 new exchange-traded funds, all of which focus on dividend-rich st...
A few years back, PowerShares made the gusty proclamation that it had the formula for beating key stock benchmark indices. Now, two of the company’s earliest ETFs have demonstrated enough of a track r...
In one of the all-time best action thrillers, archeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones survives snake pits and highway bandits to win the prize, only to see it mothballed in a government warehouse. M...
According to recent statistics, there are upwards of 200,000 wirehouse and independent broker-dealer affiliated advisors and RIAs, and there are upwards of 400,000 CPAs. I like those odds. That means ...
(Chicago) On the heels of some significant market volatility and in anticipation of news from the Fed on interest rates, Morningstar hosted its 2006 Investment Conference June 28-30 in Chicago. Speake...
Baltimore-based Legg Mason, which acquired the former Smith Barney and Salomon Brothers mutual funds from Citigroup in December 2005, says it is rebranding these funds Legg Mason Partners Funds and me...
Taking a cue from its former parent company — American Express — Ameriprise Financial is devoting a large chunk of its resources to marketing. In fact, it’s spending some $330 million on a national br...
J.D. Power and Associates says that Edward Jones has narrowly edged out Raymond James Financial, giving it the highest overall customer-satisfaction score in the 2006 Full-Service Investors Satisfacti...
Under the watch of former Merrill Lynch exec James Gorman, Morgan Stanley’s retail brokerage continues to pull in top producers from its main rival. The latest to make the jump to Gorman’s current emp...
With the wind in its sails, Wachovia is putting the 6,000 advisors in its Private Client Group on notice: You don’t have to jump ship in order to set your own course. In fact, it’s set up new procedur...
Outlook: We are raising our coverage view to Attractive from Neutral on strong gold market fundamentals and our belief that the performance “gap” between gold price and equities (at about 20 percent) ...
The past four years have been a “dream come true” for commodities bulls, and this could be only the tip of a commodities iceberg. Oil and non-oil commodities have been on a tear across the boards, alo...
OUTLOOK: Overall, our outlook for the restaurant industry is generally favorable. We expect the restaurant industry in the U.S. to sustain growth ranging from 4 percent to 5 percent per year at least ...
Kaiser, then one of the highest performing advisors at UBS Financial Services, had taken nine months off following Ryan’s death. Ryan, who had a complicated heart ailment that required three open-hear...
Nineteen-eighty is distinguished as the year Ronald Reagan was voted 40th U.S. president, the compact disc was devised, and 83 million tuned in to get hip to who shot J.R. on TV’s “Dallas.” But for Pa...
Voices/Columnists
As you’ll recall from last issue, a successful seminar marketing campaign has to deliver on five major numbers. We’ve taken a detailed look at two of them — the Acceptance and Show-Up rates. Now it’s ...
With the broker-dealer conference season safely in the rear-view mirror, I have now had sufficient time to digest some of what I’ve seen and heard over the past few months. I understand that there may...
If you’ve been searching for the perfect economics book to take to the beach, The Undercover Economist lives up to its spy-thriller title with plenty of street-level insight and observation. As the “D...
Nobody likes to think about what life would look like should disability strike. But the reality is that one-third of all Americans between the ages of 35 and 65 will become disabled for more than 90 d...
How well do you know your affluent clients? If you’ve been in business a long time, you probably believe that you have a pretty good sense of who your clients are, what’s important to them, and what y...
Recently, I went to my 25th reunion at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Originally set up as a master’s program for international bureaucrats and diplomats, by the time we g...