Trader Talk

In this article DAL Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), July 21, 2021. Brendan McDermid | Reuters A quarter of the way through earnings season, we are headed toward the best profit growth in over a decade.  One-fourth of the S&P 500 has now reported second-quarter earnings. Overall earnings are

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is planning to more than double the advisors in its traditional broker business as the Wall Street giant plots an expansion in wealth management amid intensifying competition for rich clients. The bank aims to hire more than 500 advisors in coming years, bringing its total in the unit to 1,000, said

Many of the world’s biggest asset managers say they’re increasingly struggling with some of the rules guiding the $35 trillion market for environmental, social and governance investing. Much of the confusion revolves around defining the social aspect. The guideposts are generally seen as confusing and this is “going to become a bigger issue going forward,”

Americans expect their financial advisors to act in their best interests, an expectation that can only be achieved through education, commitment to ethics and rigorous enforcement of high ethical standards. During my 20-year career at the SEC, I worked in the enforcement division, where we focused on investor protection, developing programs designed to detect various

When Direxion’s new budget-stock fund starts trading on Thursday, its biggest holding will be one of the most famously expensive shares in the country. A quirk of indexing means that AMC Entertainment Holdings — currently pricier than about 90% of S&P 500 members — has yet to exit the gauge of cheap shares tracked by

Prudential Financial said it would sell its full-service retirement business to a unit of Canada’s Great-West Lifeco for $3.55 billion as the life insurer continues implementing Chief Executive Officer Charles Lowrey’s three-year transformation plan. The business will be purchased by Great-West’s Greenwood Village, Colorado-based Empower Retirement division. Prudential expects total proceeds of about $2.8 billion

Worries over rising prices on everything from cars to plane tickets to washing machines are overblown for now, a senior Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist said Wednesday. Michelle Meyer, the head of U.S. economics at Bank of America Global Research, told a webinar hosted by the Wall Street bank and its Merrill Lynch wirehouse

Fresh off a private equity infusion and billion-dollar valuation, one of the largest hybrid RIAs is investing in financial advisor content with a new hire for its coaching arm. Carson Group — the firm whose minority stake was acquired last week by Bain Capital — appointed ex-FPA Publications Editor-in-Chief Ana Trujillo Limón to be the

A Houston, Texas-based midsize independent broker-dealer will pay $750,000 to settle a FINRA case for alleged systemic supervisory failures relating to excessive trading and variable annuities, according to the signed agreement. The firm, NEXT Financial Group, was also censured and required to retain an independent consultant. Atria Wealth Solutions, which acquired NEXT in June 2019,

UBS Wealth Management Americas more than doubled its pretax operating profit, despite the net loss of 136 financial advisors from a year earlier. The wirehouse reached a record $505 million in pretax income after its thinned-out force of 6,274 advisors reeled in net new advisory assets of $13.5 billion, UBS said in disclosing its second-quarter

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. NYSE I have several friends in the restaurant business. For the past few weeks, I’ve heard the same story every weekend: business is fabulous, and we can’t get enough help. This week, several of those restaurant people asked me what was going on with these Covid

Mariner Wealth Advisors has made its largest RIA acquisition to date to bring aboard a longtime business partner and friend of CEO Marty Bicknell. The consolidator is buying AdvicePeriod, a Los Angeles-based RIA with $5.1 billion in assets under management. With backing from private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners, which owns a minority stake

Financial advisors with a massive wealth manager bought and held an expressly short-term product for more than a year in hundreds of clients accounts, according to the SEC. UBS Financial Services agreed to pay $8.1 million in disgorgement, interest and a civil penalty after the regulator alleged that the wirehouse’s advisors placed 1,882 accounts in

In today’s climate of environmental, human and health crises, investors are interested in purpose-driven investments that align with trends, shareholder returns and employee desires. This new expectation is shifting the way organizations transact with both internal and external stakeholders. To succeed as an investment professional, you must take a holistic view of your investment strategy.

Robinhood is seeking a valuation of $35 billion in its initial public offering, just short of the highest analyst projections, as the free trading app advances toward a debut likely to attract buyers from its own novice investor base. The company at the center of this year’s meme stock frenzy will market 55 million shares

As clients increasingly commit money to make a positive impact on society, “impact-first investing,” which puts social and environmental benefit ahead of financial return, is a logical next step for philanthropically inclined individuals and families looking for a way to make a difference. But they’ll need help from financial advisors, many of whom are already

Interest in cryptocurrency has gained serious momentum in 2021. As waves of new retail investors join established institutions in evolving their investment strategies, your clients with crypto holdings may welcome ways to leverage their cryptocurrency gains and offset the tax implications. Contributing cryptocurrency to a donor-advised fund (DAF) has become a popular strategy to strategically

Charles Schwab reported mixed results for the second quarter as net income was up significantly from the year-over-year figures but down slightly from the first quarter. The Westlake, Texas-headquartered financial services company reported $1.3 billion in net income for the second quarter on revenue of $4.5 billion, helped along by the country’s returning normalcy, the

There’s no shortage of buzz about quantum computing these days, and rightfully so. Quantum computers have the potential to unlock new answers and solve new problems by performing functions not only faster than standard computers, but also in entirely new ways. Depending on who you ask, the industry is anywhere from years to decades away

Royal Bank of Canada Wealth Management has fired an advisor facing kidnapping and battery charges after he allegedly beat and imprisoned a woman in his Parkland, Florida, home just three weeks after being arrested for domestic violence against another woman. According to local news reports, Scott Jay Matalon, 40, threw his girlfriend of two months

The workplace, self-directed and retail wealth management giant that Morgan Stanley amassed through acquisitions in the past two years is humming to the tune of record revenue. After supplementing its existing wealth management unit with the purchases of employee stock and retirement plan firm Solium in 2019 and self-directed investing service E-Trade last year, the

The U.S. economy is on pace for its best year of growth in GDP in decades, according to LPL Financial’s midyear outlook. The SEC hired a team of new policy officials, and barred a jailed Morgan Stanley advisor who pleaded guilty to defrauding clients out of $6 million. Wealth management mergers and acquisitions are at

Target-date funds for the next generation of retirees have underperformed broader indexes over the last five years. They have also recorded significant outflows. The top-performing 2025 target-date funds, with at least $100 million in assets under management, notched an average five-year gain of roughly 11%, Morningstar Direct data show. Over the past year, the same

Wealth management is a silver lining at Bank of America. The Wall Street behemothreported earnings of $9.2 billion in the second quarter, up from $3.5 billion a year earlier. The huge increase was due in part to the bank’s release of more than $2 billion it stashed away in anticipation of covering soured loans from

Despite substantial hits from lost business and waivers of fees on money market funds, one of the largest custodians is adding assets and clearing accounts more quickly than a year ago. BNY Mellon’s Pershing brought in $40 billion in net new assets in the second quarter, which is nearly four times the $11 billion it

The current resurgence in value stocks calls for a discerning eye to gauge the different factor exposures driving the value rotation. Value’s resurrection began late last year as COVID-19 vaccine distribution campaign geared up and expectations for economic reopening increased. This coincided with a market shift that favored value stocks over more expensive companies exhibiting

The SEC has settled unrelated cases with two wealth management firms for improper disclosure of conflicts of interest. On Friday, the SEC announced that Kestra Advisory Services would pay $10 million for allegedly failing to disclose compensation received by its affiliated broker-dealer for investing clients in certain mutual funds. Kestra Private Wealth Services paid an

As markets rose and clients clamored to invest more, both with advisors and digitally, JPMorgan Chase’s Asset and Wealth Management unit reported $1.2 billion in net income for the second quarter of 2021 on revenue of $4.1 billion, a record, the bank announced July 13. The unit, which includes the New York-based bank’s financial advisors

A sometimes overlooked wealth management sector spanning thousands of banks and credit unions is turning into one of the most in demand for industry giants’ recruiting. With the goals of boosting their own wealth management services and adoption among their substantial client and member bases while retaining their most productive advisors, the institutions are changing

(Bloomberg Opinion) — The financial markets operate within a series of market regimes during which certain sets of economic conditions exist for a period of time. My first encounter with the concept was in 2000, when I read quantitative analyst Emanuel Derman’s paper, “Regimes of Volatility.” Derman explained that we have periods with persistently low