Trader Talk

This year’s weak performance by U.S. stocks has forced many investors to recalibrate their portfolios. And they’re fleeing do-good strategies. After more than three years of inflows, investors are now pulling cash out of U.S. equity exchange-traded funds with higher environmental, social and governance standards. May saw $2 billion of outflows from ESG equity funds,

The SEC came out last week with its most aggressive plan yet to stamp out greenwashing in the financial industry. Specifically, the agency is targeting funds that have been raking in billions of dollars by marketing themselves as dutiful stewards of environmental, social and governance principles. Wall Street’s reaction? In a nutshell, how can the

Priyanka Godbole, a 24-year-old public relations professional in New York, had the first market panic of her life in mid-March, when the S&P 500 index plunged deeper into correction territory. In a frantic group chat with friends, she typed, “Have you seen what happened today?”  That March 14, Wall Street’s gauge of leading U.S. companies

Edward Jones paid the price for its higher overall business in the first quarter in the form of lower earnings, amid the continuing decline in its headcount of financial advisors. Regardless, the attrition is slowing and the May 6 quarterly SEC filing of the firm’s parent partnership, The Jones Financial Companies, displays other signals that

Jonathan Foster, CEO of Angeles Wealth Management, has gotten a lot of vendor pitches for private equity index funds lately.  The Santa Monica-based RIA firm, part of Angeles Investments with $50 billion AUM, has deployed about $491 million to private equity managers and direct investments between 2016 and 2021. Those clients are mainly high net

Why are we still so slow to use cryptocurrencies for payments? Part of the issue is security. Even though crypto is designed to be safe, secure and traceable, it also abandons much of what makes our payments system so reliable today. Christiaan Brand from Google and Cathy Beardsley from Segpay sit down with American Banker’s

We are pleased to announce the launch of the second Financial Planning Rising Stars award recognizing planners with no more than five years of experience in the industry. The award is intended to identify and celebrate young RIA professionals and career changers who are advancing the professions through their accomplishments, contributions and service to the

A new law that requires cash apps and online marketplaces including Venmo and eBay to send tax documents to millions of Americans is ensnaring a surprising demographic: the wealthy. Under the rule, e-commerce and digital payment platforms that transfer money from a buyer of goods or services to a seller must issue the recipient a

Want to know how your firm stacks up against the competition? A new product from Boston-based Cerulli and New York-based Invesco can offer some answers.  The product, called The Practice Innovation Index, is part of Invesco Total CX, an all-in-one platform that includes content and coaching designed to help planners communicate with clients and maximize

Two well-known names in fintech have announced new compliance solutions to help growing firms manage the rapidly evolving regulatory landscape. Last week, Riskalyze launched a tool designed to help wealth managers of all sizes spot compliance red flags early across an entire book of business. The California-based company that provides portfolio risk assessment software to

Less than a day after the SEC proposed a sweeping set of new disclosure rules for money managers, one of the investment industry’s most powerful trade groups is already blasting a key aspect of the plan. The Investment Company Institute, whose members manage more than $40 trillion globally, came out Thursday against the SEC’s bid

With most Merrill Lynch financial advisors now working together on teams, the wirehouse plans to get to a 100% team approach by the end of the decade without any mandates from the home office. The firm’s share of advisors on teams has reached roughly 80% from only 45% a decade earlier, Merrill Lynch Wealth Management

Four years after an Ameriprise subsidiary sent disciplinary letters to some employees about variable annuity exchanges, the firm settled a related SEC case that’s the first of its kind. Ameriprise’s RiverSource Distributors improperly switched or replaced its variable annuities “for the purpose of generating additional selling charges” for its wholesalers and the registered representatives of

JPMorgan Chase plans to hire about 1,300 advisors over the next three years as part of a strategy to boost assets in its wealth management operation to $1 trillion. The additions would bring the total to 6,000 from about 4,700, Jennifer Piepszak, co-CEO of JPMorgan’s consumer and community banking operation, said at the firm’s investor

Ask Preston D. Cherry — a CFP financial advisor, university professor, holder of a doctorate and master’s degree and the president of the Financial Therapy Association — about the pioneers of planning and psychology, and he’ll rattle off a dozen or more names spanning decades. He brings up academic programs at Golden Gate University, Kansas

After more than a dozen years of creating content under the FPPad banner, industry veteran and leading fintech blogger Bill Winterberg is taking on a new endeavor in a new part of the country. Bill Winterberg On Wednesday, Winterberg shared with followers and supporters the news that he has joined industry-leading billing and payment platform

Bonds are the new sexy. That seems counterintuitive. Thanks to persistent inflation, higher interest rates, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the pandemic-challenged global economy, bond markets are having their worst year since the First Opium War (in 1842). It’s a historic cratering in which U.S. investment-grade government and corporate bonds have pivoted from four decades

Two of the industry’s largest recruiting and M&A transactions this year reflect a marketplace that experts say isn’t falling off its record pace — despite some signs of a slowdown. On May 21, the roughly 550 financial advisors of CUNA Mutual Group’s CUNA Brokerage Services and the first $11 billion out of an expected $36

In a new episode of the Financial Planning Podcast, Adam Green explains why the dated approach to fixed income investing won’t make it in the modern world. Green, co-founder and CEO at YieldX, launched the tech-powered platform designed to democratize fixed income investing 2019. But YieldX isn’t his first entrepreneurial endeavor. That honor goes to

With gas prices approaching $6 a gallon in places like California, consumer prices at their highest levels in 40 years and a war raging in Ukraine, investors approaching retirement are understandably concerned about their retirement savings. Scroll down for more on these stories and other developments that are reshaping the retirement landscape.

The former director of wealth management at one of the largest RIAs in the country is accusing the firm and the industry’s custodial giants of colluding in anti-competitive and harmful practices. In a lawsuit filed on May 19 in Chicago federal court against Creative Planning, firm founder Peter Mallouk, Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Fidelity Investments

Days after SEC and FINRA enforcement officials stressed the regulators’ focus on anti-money laundering rules and the duty of best execution, two new cases added examples to their words. In respective separate May 20 and May 19 settlements with the SEC, Wells Fargo Clearing Services — which operates under the trade name of Wells Fargo

Financial advisor John Bovard, owner of Incline Wealth Advisors, said hiring talent has become a headache lately.  To fill empty positions, the Cincinnati-based firm started to broaden the scope of acceptable qualifications from those with traditional finance backgrounds to a larger pool, including young applicants who were business majors in college or who pursued degrees

A giant wealth manager seeking to tap into the opportunities in a rapidly consolidating channel of the industry secured a deal to make its largest acquisition in more than two years. Advisor Group will purchase Infinex Financial Holdings, the parent company of a growing but still midsize wealth manager spanning roughly 750 financial advisors managing

The Social Security Administration pays out $1 trillion in annual benefits to tens of millions of people. Widely considered the most popular government program, it doesn’t earn those plaudits through its customer service. People who need help from one of Social Security’s 1,230 field offices often find that the telephone system doesn’t work. Sometimes it

Unions and some consumer organizations are asking the SEC to investigate mandatory RIA arbitration. UBS is adding model portfolios from AllianceBernstein, BNY Mellon, Fidelity Investments, First Trust, T. Rowe Price and Vanguard. Nearly two-thirds of RIAs are not using testimonial rules. Scroll down our cardshow to see these stories, and more, in our weekly roundup

Concurrent Advisors, a Tampa, Florida-based enterprise associated with Raymond James Financial Services, recruited teams with more than $950 million in combined client assets in the first quarter. A former Wells Fargo Advisors team led by advisors Brandon Glasscock, Mandy Haskell, John Garcia and Garry Schuefler is the largest incoming team. The Houston-based practice, which managed

Industry behemoth Fidelity recently announced the addition of bitcoin to its investment menu for those administering retirement plans via their Digital Assets Account (DAA) — making it the first major retirement plan provider to do so. And with the largest U.S. recordkeeper by AUM breaking the seal, advisors can expect more custodians to offer cryptoassets

Wealth managers are still wrapping their arms around the SEC’s Regulation Best Interest, even as they try to discredit the view that the 2020 rule hasn’t changed the industry’s practices. That was the main takeaway from a May 18 panel at FINRA’s annual conference featuring two industry governors from the regulator’s board in Commonwealth Financial

Depending on if you’re a wealth manager, a solutions provider or a regulator, the question of “what is fintech?” may be answered in slightly different ways.  But the tie that binds is innovation. Both those in the industry and those keeping an eye on it agree that without it, you might just be making apps.