News
Mike Woods, CEO of New York-based XTF Advisors, wants his fledgling firm to become as integral to the retail exchange-traded industry as the ETFs themselves. He’s in the midst of building an empire th...
The fund tracks a customized index developed by the FTSE Group for Vanguard. The index is drawn from the U.S. component of the FTSE Global Equity Index Series and consists of stocks with higher-than-a...
In the fourth quarter of last year, ETFs continued to flood the market at a dizzying pace, with no less than 40 new funds launching by the end of November. Meanwhile, expense ratios were flat to only ...
Equal-weight indexing is fighting for its share of respect and Rydex Investments plans to make sure it happens. In its new ETFs that track the nine industry sectors of the S&P 500, the Rockville, Md.-...
Over the past year, Japanese stocks have lagged most countries in the Pan-Asia basin. But that hasn’t stopped State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) from launching a fresh round of two new Japanese ETFs ...
Over the years I’ve heard many financial advisors decry the insufficient training they received in the nuts and bolts of financial planning. All too often, brokerage firms handed their rookies a lengt...
“Fiscal 2006 [ended Oct. 31, 2006] was another banner year for Eaton Vance,” says Hawkes, who will turn over the reigns to Tom Faust, 48, on Oct. 31, 2007. Total assets under management grew nearly 20...
In a separate move, Vanguard has re-opened the Strategic Equity Fund and increased the fund’s minimum initial investment to $10,000. In addition, the $25,000 annual investment limit on Vanguard Windso...
The stocks of the largest brokerage firms (Merrill, Morgan and UBS) have outperformed the S&P 500 in 2006, thanks to some key performance issues, experts say. Furthermore, the large firms are expected...
After all but announcing the deal during the Nov. 8-10, 2006, Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (or SIFMA) launch in Boca Raton, Fla., NASD and NYSE Group say it is official: like ...
(Boca Raton, Fla.) Last year, comedian Dennis Miller turned a few people off with his racy humor. This year, it was a new organization’s name — SIFMA — that became the butt of a few too many jokes and...
While the independent broker-dealer had to regroup after former President Jeff Auld returned to his native state of Iowa in August 2006, “We haven’t skipped a beat” since Auld left, says Gordon D’Ange...
“The Pursuit of Happyness” stars Will Smith as Christopher Gardner, a struggling single dad, who joined Dean Witter as a broker-intern and now runs his own financial firm in Chicago. As part of the mo...
The conference is set for June 6-8 at the Westin Diplomat in Hollywood, Fla. This means it should take place right before Pershing’s parent company, the Bank of New York, completes its planned merger ...
I have worked in the industry for over 20 years, and it still amazes me that the estimated failure rate of new advisors remains at an excessively high level of near 80 percent in the early years. What...
In the November cover story, “Mutual Funds You Can Trust,” Morningstar incorrectly placed Old Mutual Dwight S/T Fixed Income Z (OBCPX) among the worst funds in the table, “Top and Bottom Funds by Over...
Remember Netscape? The innovative web browser company went public in 1995 with a record-breaking IPO that marked the Big Bang of the Dotcom Boom. A decade later, it was a mere footnote in the history ...
Macchia: It’s as real as anything can be. There’s no denying that demographics is driving the shift from accumulation to income generation and that the scale of the transition, in both population and ...
“A CPA is one of the most highly trusted advisors to individuals and business people. I thought it would be helpful to tap into that network of trusted advisors in order to become a trusted advisor my...
“I’m sitting in an office, looking out the window, and they are building Tower Four [of the Raymond James complex.] Talk about the writing on the wall. Here’s a firm, in the middle of a bear market, a...
Voices/Columnists
Remember when you started college and the person welcoming you to the school told you to look at the person on either side of you because one of them wouldn’t be there in four years? Look around. Whil...
But, in order to enjoy airline travel, I must also learn to enjoy another aspect of flying: waiting. You see, in the good old days (2005) there didn’t seem to be as much waiting as there is today. The...
If you and your clients have a New Year’s resolution to be better and smarter investors, then you may want to check out Forbes columnist Ken Fisher’s latest book, The Only Three Questions That Count: ...
Advisors don’t need to be reminded how much of an expenditure paying for college has become for their clients. We’ve all seen examples of how college bills can damage a family’s nest egg. Advisors nee...
An advisor recently made an innocent online inquiry into the best way to release unprofitable clients. Immediately, the advisor was hammered by a slew of negative and even hostile message board respon...
If there is a place worth flying to for lunch from New York City — and on Election Day no less — it is probably Locke-Ober in Boston. Already Beantown’s leading French restaurant in 1883, it retains t...
When 2006 began, all eyes in global equity markets were glued to the Federal Reserve. The U.S. central bank has always been a pivotal player in international financial markets, and foreign central ban...