Much has changed since Elliot Spitzer's efforts exploded the well-entrenched preferred list model for mutual fund distribution. Centralized home-office due-diligence teams are now in the driver's seat, with advisors selecting products for their...
It has been an embarrassing time for most big Wall Street banks. In the third quarter of 2007, NYSE-reporting firms posted their worst quarterly performance on record, collectively amassing $3.8 billion in losses. Of course, their balance sheets...
Ignore the Next Big Thing? Who would do such a thing? The fee-based model, with its steady stream of revenue, is an attractive way of doing business for lots of advisors. And it has been billed as the newest rage for years now. But there are still...
As Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and other firms take write-offs of about $100 billion (and counting) due to the credit bubble, you might have had this gnawing feeling: This is familiar I've seen this movie before. And you would have been correct. You...
A financial advisor we know recently left his big brokerage firm to go independent completely independent, as in setting up his own registered investment advisory firm. How is the technology search going? we asked him. It's kind of a baffler, he...
Financial firms have written down more than $100 billion in capital (at the time of this writing). And, the destruction of capital is expected to spread now that some bond insurers seem to be on the lip of insolvency. Not to pick on our friends at...
Maybe Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain just wanted to test his audience. At an investment conference today, Thain said that Merrill would abandon CDO underwriting and other structured-credit businesses, the very ones that led to the subprime meltdown...
Gold hit record highs Friday, as February COMEX futures punched through $900 intraday before finally settling near $898. Gold bugs swarmed around the media outlets making sure they got quoted as the first—the very first—to call this...
Financial research firm Morningstar announced today the three winners chosen as “Mutual Fund Managers of the Year.” But with many studies showing one year’s hot managers
Since the first exchange-traded bond fund appeared in 2002, financial rocket scientists have struggled to launch a tax-free ETF. The development efforts finally bore fruit in September, when Barclays Global Investors launched its iShares S&P...
