Are investment research firms, such as Morningstar and Ibbotson Associates, now rivals to reps? FAs, who subscribe to Morningstar and Ibbotson research by the thousands, might be forgiven for thinking so. Ibbotson, traditionally focused on...
Back in 1998, with the Internet craze in full riot, Merrill Lynch legend John Steffens, then head of the firm's private client unit, delivered a keynote address at the PC Expo in New York. What was amazing about his speech was his explicit...
Mark Little, a San Antonio-based broker gave away 99 percent of his clients. And that, he says, is the best thing he has ever done to boost his income.
The biggest hurdle for advisors who want to swap their high-net-worth clients for ultra-high-net-worth clients is convincing the target customers that they are understood. This, of course, is not an easy task if for no other reason than because...
TD Waterhouse avoided a lawsuit from Charles Schwab yesterday by issuing a public apology for a negative portrayal of the firm in its ads. The underlying truth: These are trying times for the online brokerage industry.
As one A.G. Edwards financial advisor sees it, regulators and broker/dealer management have gone overboard with mutual fund disclosure. Take the case of the B-share class of mutual funds. Right now, B shares are the baddest guys on the Street, the...
When Jim King sits down with clients for the first time, he hands them the usual forms and risk-assessment questionnaires and a Myers-Briggs personality test, the same one used by top corporations to size up potential hires. I've found it useful...
Countless contributions have been made for victims of the devastating tsunami that has killed more than 160,000 people. But one UBS advisor provided some relief of his own. John Alex, a UBS advisor based in New York, took 10 days leave to...
For a variety of reasons, many casual investors imagine that, with a modicum of effort, they can ride wheel-to-wheel with the Lance Armstrongs of investing (a delusion, it must be said, that is actively encouraged by much of the financial press)...
In a move that surprised few, the SEC voted 5-0 Wednesday to ban “directed brokerage,” in which mutual fund managers direct trades through brokerages’ trading desks as a reward for them selling their funds to retail clients...