Trader Talk

While the asset management industry has been watching and waiting for a mutual fund to become an ETF for the first time, it turns out history was being made with a conversion of another kind. A tiny U.S. hedge fund has just become the first to convert into an ETF. The actively managed Upholdings Compound

I have friends who are old enough to remember not only Oldsmobile cars, but also their final big marketing tagline — the one that killed the brand, according to some experts: “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.” The idea behind the campaign was that Oldsmobile had reinvented itself, exchanging a stodgy, “Father Knows Best” image

The private equity investors fueling record consolidation in wealth management are seeking out firms at the industry’s intersection with related professional services. In separate deals announced on consecutive days this week, PE-backed buyers respectively purchased Truist Financial’s $10-billion 401(k) plan advisory business and a wealth management and tax consulting practice with $3.29 billion in assets

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. NYSE Despite the chaos at the Capitol, the S&P 500 closed Wednesday at a new high, which baffled some observers. “I think most feel this [the Washington protests] is more of a one-off situation, that this as an isolated event as opposed to some

The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department released guidance Wednesday on claiming deductions for expenses associated with Paycheck Protection Program loans that have been forgiven. The guidance in Revenue Ruling 2021-02 also reverses previous guidance issued last year by the IRS and the Treasury when Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin fiercely opposed the ability to

Raymond James’ independent broker-dealer finished off 2020 by completing its largest recruiting move of the year in terms of total client assets. A quartet of Franklin, Tennessee-based advisors with Campbell Johnson McGiboney Wealth Advisors dropped Morgan Stanley to affiliate with Raymond James, the firm announced Jan. 4. The team managed $1.1 billion in total client

The 20 bond funds with the biggest gains of 2020 benefited from the Fed’s aggressive response to COVID-19. With an average annual return of more than 19%, the year’s fixed-income leaders more than doubled their industry peers and outpaced stock-index trackers over the period, Morningstar Direct data show. For comparison, the iShares Core U.S. Aggregate

Family offices are heading back to hedge funds. More than a third of 185 investment firms for wealthy clans plan to boost allocations amid the economic upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a survey released Wednesday by BlackRock and Juniper Place, a London-based firm that helps asset managers raise capital. More than three-quarters

Wells Fargo, rarely seen as a major force in the world of trading and dealmaking, aims to expand its investment bank in coming years. It’s part of a strategy CEO Charles Scharf has been developing since taking over the troubled consumer and commercial banking giant 14 months ago from its offices in New York, according

LPL Financial’s latest FINRA settlement feels like deja vu. The nation’s largest independent broker-dealer agreed to pay $6.5 million after FINRA investigators found many of the same kinds of supervisory failures that the regulator cited in cases roughly five years earlier, according to the Dec. 31 settlement. The case involves client account statements known as

SVB Financial Group in Santa Clara, Calif., has agreed to buy Boston Private Financial Holdings in Boston. The $96.9 billion SVB said in a press release Monday that it will pay $900 million in cash and stock for the $9.4 billion-asset Boston Private. The deal, which is expected to close in mid-2021, priced Boston Private

For years, regulators have quashed hopes of a bitcoin ETF, citing worries about everything from market volatility and industry manipulation to thin liquidity. Just like Bitcoin itself, issuers keep fighting back. VanEck has started a new push to launch an ETF tracking the world’s largest digital currency, according to an SEC filing. The VanEck Bitcoin

As private equity firms inject capital across wealth management, one of the largest consolidators kicked off the year with a record-breaking RIA acquisition agreement. In its largest deal ever, Hightower is buying Bel Air Investment Advisors — a Los Angeles-based ultrahigh-net-worth practice with more than $8 billion in assets under management — from a Canadian

Private collection agencies that have contracted with the Internal Revenue Service to collect overdue tax debts have collected nearly $500 million since 2017, according to a new report, but that’s just a fraction of the over $30 billion owed. The report, from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, found that as of May 14,

A new lawsuit alleging conflicts of interest at BNY Mellon has put the investment advice of its wealth management unit under the microscope. BNY Mellon allegedly made “hundreds of millions of dollars” by investing client assets in underperforming proprietary and affiliated mutual funds, according to the lawsuit filed Dec. 21 by two clients in a

The question of whether advisors have a duty to recommend cheaper fund share classes to clients is at the center of an increasing number of SEC enforcement cases, in a pattern that could signal major implications for wealth management firms. Buried deep in the SEC’s spate of mutual fund share-class enforcement cases in recent years

When Jamie Dimon, the head of America’s largest bank, says the U.S. economy is in jeopardy, Federal Reserve policy makers and elected officials ought to take notice. This detail was tucked away in a Wall Street Journal profile of JPMorgan Chase’s CEO published near Christmas. The article began with his near-death experience in early March

From a global pandemic to murder hornets to actual UFO images being released, 2020 didn’t just throw curveballs; it kept us dangling at the edge of our seats like a bad infomercial. “But wait, there’s more!” 2020 brought us something else, too: a global spotlight on racial injustice. After the murder of George Floyd, the

Source: NYSE photo Art Cashin couldn’t lead the New York Stock Exchange in the singing of “Wait til the Sun Shines Nellie” this year, but he penned this poem for UBS and its clients, and is sharing it with us here.  Happy New Year, Art. Look forward to seeing you on the floor in 2021. Subscribe

Prospective clients could soon begin browsing for RIA firms via a host of third-party ratings sites, just as they would shop for a plumber or landscaper, as advisors begin to promote their practices under the SEC’s long-awaited new advertising rules. Outgoing commission Chairman Jay Clayton describes the update of the decades-old regulation as a long-overdue,

A FINRA compliance program that drew industry ire when it was announced nearly two years ago unveiled the first 19 resulting cases, with more to follow in 2021. In a far cry from the initial set of 79 settlements netting $125 million in restitution under a similar SEC mutual fund share-class program that had made

When it comes to saving for their children’s college fund, most parents could use a little direction. Some may know about the benefits of using tax-advantaged 529 plans, but many will need help navigating the vast array of options. More than five dozen 529 plans exist for guardians and loved ones to consider using —

As advisors stare down the end of 2020, they may begin to question if 2021 will bring a repeat of the 2008-2009 financial crisis in which we saw high-net-worth clients opting to change financial advisors, in our observation, in significant numbers. Granted, 2020’s economic turmoil played out differently than it did last time. On March

There’s a new champion in the battle for bragging rights atop the $5.3 trillion ETF industry, while a familiar laggard is seeing its slice of the U.S. market shrink toward a record low. Vanguard is on track to beat BlackRock in attracting ETF flows for the first time since 2013, with a record of $194

Things were very different when I started in this industry in 1981. Mortgage rates were 17% and money markets were paying 20%. I’ve experienced the single-day crash of 1987, the tech bubble of 2000-2002, the great recession of 2008-2009 and, obviously, the most recent COVID-19 bear market which preceded the fastest market recovery in history.

The new round of $600 payments may be one of the highlights of the $900 billion stimulus package created by Congress on Monday, and currently awaiting President Trump’s signature, but it also includes a host of tax provisions that accountants and tax professionals should be aware of. Among the more critical provisions, according to Mark

Over the past three years, stocks have been rocked by deteriorating trade relationships, economic turbulence and a pandemic that’s ravaged the globe. Throughout it all, investors have refused to pull cash from one of Vanguard’s largest ETFs. The $37 billion Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund ETF (VXUS) hasn’t posted an outflow since July 25,

Discount brokerages and traditional broker-dealers aren’t the only wealth management firms feeling the sting from rock-bottom interest rates.. The Federal Reserve’s policy also pumped the brakes on what had been a powerful growth engine for digital advice startups. In 2019, nearly every major robo advisor pivoted toward cash management and banking services, offering some of

The worst fiscal crisis in decades is pitting U.S. states against one another over billions in taxes from residents working from home. New Jersey and Connecticut on Tuesday joined a legal battle to stop neighboring states from taxing residents who — due to the pandemic — have stopped commuting over state lines and are now

Robinhood was sued in a proposed class action for allegedly failing to inform clients it was selling their stock orders to trading firms and effectively charging back-door commission fees. The complaint filed Wednesday in San Francisco federal court follows the company’s $65 million settlement last week with the SEC over similar allegations. While Robinhood touted