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The Department of Labor this week issued guidance for advisors that seemed to take a tough stance on conflicts of interest as it interpreted the Trump-era exemption for fiduciaries operating in the retirement space. Tuesday’s announcement from the department drew praise from some investor advocates, who hope that the Labor Department and SEC will move

Deciding to delay claiming Social Security until age 70 is one of the best financial decisions Americans can make. But only 4% of people born 1943-1947 claimed at age 70. It’s clear that sometimes people face pressure to claim Social Security benefits much earlier than they should. And those sometimes might be right now. The

Traders on the New York Stock Exchange. Source: NYSE This is a very powerful rally. The combination of surprisingly strong economic reports and even more surprisingly strong earnings reports is pushing broad swaths of the U.S. stock market to new highs. Even the technicians are impressed. “The vast majority of NYSE stocks are in intermediate-term

Bernard Madoff’s death in prison Wednesday doesn’t change much for his victims, many of whom are still waiting to be made whole on their share of $20 billion that vanished with the con man’s 2008 arrest. The recovery effort, still underway in court more than a decade later, has been remarkably successful at recouping the

The wealthy Florida grandmother who accused her two grandsons of mishandling her money while working at JPMorgan Chase apparently has a soft heart. Beverley Schottenstein, 94, has waged high-profile battles with the Wall Street bank and her financial advisors there — her grandsons, brothers Evan Schottenstein and Avi Schottenstein— for allegedly abusing their fiduciary duty

For the first time in years, David Booth’s old-school views on investing are back in fashion. The co-founder of quant giant Dimensional Fund Advisors is finding a receptive audience for his belief that value investing will win out in the long haul — just like the academics said it would. In June, Dimensional plans to

Morgan Stanley’s acquisition of E-Trade is paying early dividends for the wirehouse. The start of 2021 was the best quarter in history for Morgan Stanley’s wealth management business, which brought in $105 billion in net new assets, an annualized increase of 10% from the beginning of the period. Fee-based flows were $37 billion, also a

For decades, the SEC’s criteria for an accredited investor — one allowed to participate in private capital markets — has been akin to the story of Goldilocks — both too broad, and too specific. Until last summer when the commission expanded the pool of investors and fixed the definition to one that approached “just right.”

The great stock-market rotation is revitalizing a $1.4 trillion corner of quantitative investing and handing ETF managers a rare opportunity to outperform the S&P 500. Systematic strategies wrapped up in ETFs — known as smart-beta products — took in a record $28 billion in March, according to Bloomberg data. After luring almost $7 billion so

As Merrill Lynch reworks its advisor development program strategy and restricts certain client prospecting methods, its Thundering Herd is thinning. Bank of America lost a net 585 advisors in the twelve months ending in March, reducing its headcount to 19,808 advisors, according to the company. A net 295 of those departures took place in the

In this article PEP A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. NYSE Everyone knew earnings were going to be good, but this is really good. “There’s evidence every day that growth is clearly improving around the world, today from the US to Australia,” Ed Hyman, chairman and head of the

J.P. Morgan Advisors has a new leader. Phil Sieg has been named CEO just one year after he was hired to head J.P. Morgan Advisors’ practice management team, according to an internal memo from Kristin Lemkau, CEO of J.P. Morgan Wealth Management. Sieg will oversee a unit of about 450 advisors in 21 offices who

Trading software AdvisorPeak has introduced new functionality that will let independent financial advisors buy, trade and manage cryptocurrencies on behalf of clients alongside traditional portfolio holdings. Prime Trust, an API-based custody and clearing firm that specializes in digital assets, will provide custody services as well as payment processing, tax reporting, asset liquidity, transaction settlements and

A former JPMorgan Chase executive who managed private client advisor teams with billions of dollars in client assets and led a diverse broker recruiting program has launched her own practice with Carson Group. Sixteen months after financial advisor Jacqueline Campbell left her prior firm to begin building Chicago-based Alexander Legacy Private Wealth Management, she selected

Wells Fargo’s headcount has shrunk yet again as the bank’s wealth management unit moves forward with its plans to exit the international advice business. A net 236 advisors left either Wells Fargo Advisors or Private Bank in the three months that ended in March, the company said in its latest quarterly report. The bank now

It’s not quite the nearly $1 billion blunder that Citigroup made last summer, but Charles Schwab said it accidentally sent more than $1 million to the Fidelity Brokerage Services account of a woman in Louisiana. Schwab blamed an “issue created by a software enhancement” for erroneously transferring $1.2 million in February to the Fidelity account

Gary Gensler, then-chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Simon Dawson | Bloomberg | Getty Images The Senate is expected to confirm Gary Gensler as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, and crypto assets — including bitcoin — are likely high on his agenda. With Democrats in control of all

A family office and high-net-worth practice that left Merrill Lynch to launch an RIA in 2018 has in turn recruited an advisor going independent after more than 20 years with wirehouses. Lisa Quadrini left the Wells Fargo Advisors private bank division to join Brandywine Oak Private Wealth on the Dynasty Financial Partners RIA platform, the

An RIA aggregator that launched into the crowded sector earlier this year has made its first M&A deal and opened its first location on the West Coast. Financial advisor Kristin Bartlow joined Journey Strategic Wealth after nearly a dozen years with Northwestern Mutual, where she had grown the ensemble practice to a team of four

After one of the strangest years ever, ETF debuts are once again ramping up to capture cash flooding the industry. About 100 new ETFs have debuted so far in 2021, the best start to a year in at least a decade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares to 54 by this time in

With a growing number of independent wealth managers vying for wirehouse breakaways, LPL Financial has now recruited a half-dozen ex-employee teams to a channel it launched last year. The latest additions are financial advisors Josh Brown, Scott Thompson, Joel Gray and James “Jake” Cluverius of NorthEnd Private Wealth, who left Merrill Lynch for the largest

After achieving positive flows last year in its asset management business, Ameriprise Financial has inked a deal that would introduce even more clients to the company’s funds. Ameriprise is buying BMO Financial Group’s EMEA asset management business for approximately $845 million, it said April 12. The deal, expected to close in the fourth quarter, will

In this article COIN Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018. Steve Jennings | Getty Images for TechCrunch The pending Coinbase direct listing, scheduled for April 14th on the Nasdaq under the symbol COIN, is exciting a broad base of the investment community outside the usual cryptocurrency crowd. “Coinbase is

A consortium of CEOs and other leaders of major U.S. corporations held an hour-long Zoom call on Saturday to discuss ways to push for greater voting access amid new restrictions enacted or pending in Georgia, Texas and other states. Among the options they’re considering: re-evaluating donations to candidates supporting restrictions on voter access and reconsidering

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said the asset manager needs to get more assertive about improving diversity, equity and inclusion. “I judge BlackRock pretty harshly on that,” Fink said in an interview with the Harvard Business Review, which was taped last week and broadcast Thursday. He said the firm offers training and other programs to help

Your bosses really care about you, right? A glimmer of light is finally emerging from some banks, with Barclays picking up the baton on being kinder to staff from Citigroup’s new boss Jane Fraser, who appears to believe that working smarter might be better than the work-til-you-drop culture that dominates Wall Street. Barclays says analysts

Correction This story has been corrected to show that Tasha Borglum, part of the Breckenridge team at Moneta, is based in St. Louis, Missouri. April 09, 2021 6:32 PM EDT Correction This story has been corrected to show that Tasha Borglum, part of the Breckenridge team at Moneta, is based in St. Louis, Missouri. April

It’s hard to believe but true: Most financial advisors have now passed the one-year anniversary of the abrupt shift to digital isolation due to the coronavirus pandemic. “At the moment, virtual reality is our reality, so take care of yourself and try to focus on the things you can control,” writes Laura Cheeley. Thankfully, we

When Lee Kun-hee was assembling one of the world’s biggest privately owned art collections, little did he know that it would become embroiled in his family’s tax woes. The trove includes a portrait of Dora Maar by Pablo Picasso, one of Claude Monet’s water lilies paintings and thousands of other works that together are estimated

I wasn’t thinking about my student loans a year ago. In April, 2020, I was thinking about the wailing sirens from ambulances speeding past my apartment day and night, an endless reminder of COVID-19, which has since killed more than 500,000 people in the U.S. and nearly 3 million worldwide. I was thinking about my