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...

For 25 years, Alan Gladstone picked individual stocks for clients. Then five years ago, Gladstone, a senior vice president and financial advisor for Morgan Stanley, began switching to exchange-traded funds. Today nearly all his client assets are...

Now that the Baby Boomer generation is retiring in droves, fund companies are focusing on a thorny question: How can retirees obtain reliable income from their investments? Since September, half a dozen companies including Russell, DWS Scudder and...

There was a time when the institutional side of a securities firm would walk with a swagger. After all, it was you, the retail financial advisor, who was stuck making presentations at a coffee table with mom-and-pops. Institutional brokers...