Adam Antoniades, president of First Allied, said Advanced Equities has its roots in venture capital and private equity deals, and the parent was hoping to grow that business through the independent channel when it purchased First Allied.

The Charles Schwab Corp. (NYSE:SCHW) said today it will pay about $1 billion in stock for optionsXpress Holdings (NASDAQ-GS:OXPS), the retail online brokerage business, in a deal it expects to close in the third quarter. The deal will give Schwab...

There's very little real difference between the performance of mutual funds and ETPs in the commodity space, but there's a whole lot of difference in the products' risk characteristics.

Water utilities, toll roads and airports are steady revenue generators, despite a slowing economic climate.

ETF fund assets and numbers continue to soar in 2008. As of May 31, there were 683 ETFs in the U.S., with assets totaling approximately $612 billion. ETF industry assets rose nearly $17 billion for the month of May, buoyed by positive performance...

They've got a lot of competition these days from so-called alternatives like ETFs and other products, many of which have been quickly lapping up new assets in recent years. But mutual funds' all-out dominance of the vast U.S. investment universe...