Trader Talk

If your clients are clamoring for stocks they heard about on Reddit, making investing decisions based on what happened to them yesterday or refusing to buy overseas securities, they may be among the many investors who are falling for classic behavioral biases in the markets. Advisors are getting better at using behavioral finance to help

Lori Hardwick can’t stay away from wealthtech boards. Just three months after a marketing misfire pushed her to resign as chair of the board at Riskalyze, Hardwick has been named chair of the board at Vestwell, a digital 401(k) record-keeping platform and one of Financial Planning’s 2021 best fintechs to work for.  For Hardwick, it’s

The use of a spousal lifetime access trust, or SLAT, to eliminate the risk of changes in the estate and gift tax system can help separate legacy assets from lifetime assets. SLATs can be a planning solution to address the difficulties of making that separation. This article will help estate planners explore building the perfect

Rohit Chopra was confirmed by the Senate to serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, returning a consumer watchdog to an agency that has been rocked by partisan divisions over the scope of its power. Chopra was approved Thursday by the Senate in a 50-48 vote along party lines. He has been serving

Democrats plan to increase taxes for the wealthiest Americans partly by limiting some juicy retirement tax breaks. Much of what they’ve proposed in the House of Representatives takes aim at supersized individual retirement accounts and the exotic tactics used to create them. Think of what venture capitalist Peter Thiel did to accumulate $5 billion tax-free.

Though it’s a difficult conversation to have, families and caregivers should plan ahead for the financial burden of long-term and end-of-life-care, especially for older clients and those with diagnoses like dementia or ALS, Dr. Carolyn McClanahan, a physician and financial advisor, told an audience at the Morningstar Investment Conference in late September. For clients who

The Biden administration’s tax proposal to treat certain transfers as income tax realization events would create significant administrative issues for individual taxpayers and their financial advisors. If enacted, taxpayers will need to track — and prove — their tax basis in assets they gift during their lives or transfer at death and clients will expect

A deal by large money manager Franklin Templeton to acquire O’Shaughnessy Asset Management, a trailblazer of personalized stock portfolios, further nudges financial advisors to embrace a retail investing trend that’s sweeping Wall Street. San Mateo, California-based Franklin said Thursday it would pay an undisclosed sum for O’Shaughnessy, a $6.4 billion investment advisory firm in Stamford,

Fintech startups like Onramp Invest have new competition in an accelerating race to provide financial advisors access to digital assets like Bitcoin. Flourish, a fintech Mass Mutual Life Insurance Company acquired in 2020 to provide RIAs with cash management services and other financial products, has a new solution to allow independent advisors and their clients

Questionable brokerages with rogue salespeople deservedly get slammed for routinely failing to pay regulator-ordered money to investors whom they’ve cheated. But independent advisory firms with sketchy financial planners are equally bad when it comes to not ponying up required awards — a problem that’s both murkier and getting worse, according to a report released Wednesday

The pandemic that had most of the country quarantining at home in 2020 also shuttered courts and sent state securities regulators to work in their bedrooms and basements just like their constituents. But they continued hunting down fraudsters, the annual report of the North American Securities Administrators Association shows. “NASAA members are the first line

Joan Crain’s job is to guide the wealthy through complicated financial decisions where mistakes can cost millions of dollars. That task is proving particularly tricky now thanks to Joe Biden’s proposed tax plan and the lack of clarity over what the Democrats will pass. “We have to calm them down,” said Crain, global wealth strategist

Early in his career, financial advisor Michael G. Mohr of Comprehensive Financial Management got bored with being a traditional CPA. He decided to make ultrahigh net worth clients his specialty and narrow the Silicon Valley-based practice’s base to no more than three, Mohr recalled last year at the Hawaii Community Foundation’s Professional Advisor in Philanthropy

One of the largest fee-only RIAs in the country is folding into an even larger firm in an M&A deal that will create a multifamily office with $20 billion in client assets in 11 major markets. Atlanta-based Berman Capital Advisors will merge with Chicago-based Cresset Asset Management and do business as Berman Cresset after the

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), September 21, 2021. Brendan McDermid | Reuters This is a very tricky moment for the markets. The market is in the middle of another rise in interest rates, which is causing traders and investors to move a lot of stocks around. Political dysfunction

When financial advisors choose to change firms, they must navigate a slew of state and federal regulations, contractual obligations and other legal risks. The transition may seem daunting, but there are steps that can be taken to minimize or mitigate risks. Douglas Hyman of Lewitas Hyman, a Chicago law firm, said advisors considering independence should

Big, occasionally gargantuan, retirement plans are walking the plank in Democrats’ plans to raise taxes. So are millions of far more modest IRAs. The emerging tax bill would ban individual retirement accounts of all types and any size from holding alternative investments intended only for investors whom securities regulators consider “sophisticated.” That means shares in

Wealth management’s fragmentation makes ranking and classifying fee-only RIAs a difficult and often controversial topic. The lack of uniform standards governing exactly which RIAs are fee-only financial planning firms turns a simple listing of the companies with the most assets under management into an examination of the profession’s highest ideals and a probe of which

One of the largest teams to leave an independent broker-dealer in 2021 is moving to Mariner Wealth Advisors from Cambridge Investment Research after only a year. Mariner made its sixth M&A deal of 2021 when it purchased FCG Advisors, a Cambridge-affiliated practice based in Chatham, New Jersey, with four advisors managing $2.7 billion in client

As the RIA movement gains millions more clients with trillions of dollars each year, its identity crisis about defining which firms offer fee-only, fiduciary advice is growing in tandem. The vexing fragmentation stems from the fact that the giant wealth managers most responsible for the record numbers of clients and assets in RIAs are, in

Planning and executing IT projects is a challenge for all chief technology and information officers — but for those at broker-dealers and roll-up RIAs, it is a never-ending battle. In order to ensure a project goes smoothly, they must understand the potential drawbacks of developing, integrating and/or maintaining wealth management technology in-house versus buying it

Almost from the day he started his wealth-management firm in 2014, Russ Charvonia would get unsolicited emails offering to buy the company. He’d send them directly to his trash folder. But like hundreds of other managers this year, Charvonia eventually took the plunge. Last month, his Ventura, California-based Channel Islands Group and its $277 million

A private bank team serving high net worth clients went independent with plans for expansion as the first outpost of an RIA outside of its headquarters. Crewe Advisors tapped financial advisors Jason Miller, Kris Yamano, Duncan Corley and Louise Goudy, along with senior associate Kimberly Mawk, to open its new office in Scottsdale, Arizona, after

Amid growing links between investors’ faith and their money, a Catholic fraternal benefit society aims to work with RIAs by offering proprietary model portfolios using its ESG screens. The Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors and wealth management technology vendor AssetMark are starting out with about 125 investment advisor representatives managing more than $30 million after

Crypto investments are exciting and promising for many investors. But there’s another word some experts use to describe them — “uncomfortable.” Matthew Hougan, chief investment officer of Bitwise Asset Management, likened it to “investing in the internet in the late 1990s,” at the Morningstar Investment Conference this week. Ben Johnson, Matthew Hougan, Tyrone Ross, and

Raymond James attracted several advisors this week, as did LPL Financial, J.P. Morgan and others. Financial planning company eMoney Advisor developed some handy financial education content for its app, the Financial Planning Association has new leadership, and the North American Securities Administrators Association has data on firms’ cybersecurity progress. Scroll through to find what you

An ex-wirehouse team managing billions in client assets became the latest breakaway opting to launch an RIA after considering their options during the pandemic. Financial advisors Scott Bills, Brett Bills, Teresa Friess, Aaron Seeman and Joshua DeLoach opened Nilsine Partners on the Dynasty Financial Partners platform after leaving Merrill Lynch, the firm said on Sept.

If you work at a wirehouse but have come to think independence is the best option for you and your clients, the best advice I can give you is to prepare and plan. I speak from experience. My team, which is responsible for the advisor onboarding experience at Commonwealth, has worked with numerous wirehouse advisors

Large wealth managers are embracing sponsorship over mentorship when it comes to boosting the number of Black senior leaders and other minority executives. In a panel at the Association of African American Financial Advisors Vision conference, executives from Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Wealth Management, Citi and Stifel explained the importance of not simply guiding incoming

Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), speaks during a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021. Bill Clark | Bloomberg | Getty Images Investors are bracing for an imminent report from Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler on the