Trader Talk

Decades of initiatives to increase diversity within the finance industry have produced limited results. None of the major U.S. banks have ever had a woman CEO. Women and people of color are still underrepresented throughout the asset management industry. So we went around the world asking for advice on what needs to be done.

LPL Financial’s head recruiter has reassuring words for advisors who decide to leave its new employee channel now or in the future: Don’t worry. “We’ll help them move their clients to that new firm,” says Rich Steinmeier, LPL’s divisional president of business development. “We will not go after their clients. We will try to keep

The Labor Department is hearing an earful this week from industry groups, consumer advocates and lawmakers about its new fiduciary proposal. The criticisms are wide-ranging, with industry groups warning that it will automatically impose a presumption of fiduciary status on financial professionals, while others blast the regulation for failing to enact meaningful consumer protections. Still

A doctor expected to work for two to three more years before moving closer to his kids and grandkids. A couple in their fifties and sixties looked forward to settling seaside in Costa Rica. A mortgage broker planned to retire later this year. Instead, the coronavirus scrambled retirement plans for all three. It’s a story

Tyrone Ross Jr., known for his financial advisor podcast at the startup custodian Altruist, says he used to be a Bitcoin skeptic. Now, he’s going all in, seeing digital currencies as an opportunity to help financially underserved communities. Ross has been named the first CEO of Onramp Invest, a cryptocurrency and alternative investment startup owned

While advisors now have reams of data at their fingertips, turning it into meaningful, useful information has long been a pain point. This means planners can’t identify growth opportunities and slows growth. However, tech vendors are finally delivering some solutions. Turnkey asset management platform Envestnet, for one, recently unveiled Insights Solutions, a new suite of

Merrill Lynch wants to rev up its growth engine with a new practice management program for its more than 17,000 advisors and FSAs. The program, Elite Growth Practice, has been more than two years in the making and has been rolled out following significant jumps in advisor productivity last year. The wirehouse’s top advisors provided

Tricia Rothschild, the 26-year Morningstar veteran, started as president of Apex Clearing the first week of August.Apex Clearing Apex Clearing, known for servicing robo advisors and fintechs, is expanding its custody services for traditional RIAs, and it’s tapping talent from Morningstar and Fidelity to make it happen. Tricia Rothschild, former chief product officer at Morningstar,

Charles Schwab provided advisors an update on which pieces of technology it will keep from its planned acquisition of rival TD Ameritrade, but is keeping quiet on its plans for Veo One. Schwab will adopt retail trading platform thinkorswim, as well as integrate the for-advisors version thinkpipes into its existing advisor trading platform. Schwab will

Cash management accounts, offered by nonbank financial services providers, are meant to help people spend and save their money. Until recently, many highlighted a high interest rate and lacked certain checking-related, consumer-friendly features, like debit cards and ATM access. Customers often had to use online transfers to move their money around. Since interest rates dropped

While the coronavirus pandemic may have moved the upcoming presidential election off the front burner for much of the spring and summer, it’s bound to move back as the fall approaches. With that in mind, public accounting firm Crowe has released this handy at-a-glance summary of the two candidates’ proposed policies for taxes on individuals.

While the vast majority of financial advisors are still registered with FINRA, the organization is losing even more traction with the broker-dealer channel. Fewer than 40,000 reps joined the brokerage industry last year — the lowest number of FINRA registrations since at least 2005, the earliest year included in FINRA’s report. That year there were

Wrung out by years of scandals at Wells Fargo, a team of six financial advisors became the most recent defectors after the bank failed to secure Paycheck Protection Program loans for about 50 business owners they serve. “We basically had clients demanding that we find a new home,” says Chris Williams of his team’s decision

If you have a Citi credit card and shop on Amazon, you now have a new way to pay, via Citi Flex Pay on Amazon. With this feature, for qualifying purchases of $100 or more, eligible cardholders can opt for a monthly payment plan instead of purchasing the item outright with their Citi card. Eligible

In our practice we work with many business owners, many of whom have used these last few coronavirus-dominated months to reevaluate their businesses, their work and their lives. As a result of this reflection, we have seen an increasing number of business owners decide that now is the time to exit. It wasn’t just our

A pair of lawsuits allege Morgan Stanley compromised sensitive client information — including Social Security, passport and account numbers — by failing to fully wipe decommissioned computer equipment that has since gone missing. The first lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in New York, represents five current and former Morgan Stanley clients who were notified

Raymond James snapped up five former Merrill Lynch advisors who managed a collective $515 million in client assets, according to the firm. All five cited Raymond James’ technology platform as motivation for making the career change. Four of the advisors make up Evergreen Financial Partners and staff a new Raymond James office in Burlington, Massachusetts.

For much of the investment world, gains have been hard to come by in the year of the coronavirus. But for funds at the top, returns have been huge. With more than $55 billion in combined assets, the 20 mutual funds and ETFs with the biggest gains of 2020 have managed an average return of

They’ve been billed as a solution to the rock-bottom interest rates weighing down the returns of America’s asset managers. Collateralized loan obligations — which package and sell leveraged loans into chunks of varying risk and return — have been touted as safe, high-yielding alternatives to everything from government bonds and mortgage securities to corporate debt.

Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management told clients it will close to new investments next month, after raising $10 billion since it started managing outside capital less than three years ago. Point72 was one of the biggest launches of 2018, when Cohen returned to the industry after a two-year ban from managing other people’s money. His

With Joe Biden leading President Trump in the polls, some investors are concerned the age of corporate tax cuts and deregulation may soon end, replaced by a Democratic administration eager to soak the rich. Those fears are unfounded, according to UBS. While Biden has proposed tax increases on high-income individuals and corporations, such hikes would

Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are only the most recent examples of a notable trend: earnings much better than expected. The reopening story may be getting rocky, but one pleasant surprise has been earnings. They are far noisier than normal, but in general they have been better than expected. Much better. And that is one of

Does bigger equal better? Not always. Consolidation continues to reshape wealth management. That means big independent broker-dealers that serve the largest number of financial advisors enjoy advantages, but face distinct challenges. Indeed, some firms have cut from their ranks; others brag about their selectivity. The 10 firms listed below boast the most producing representatives in

For some people, a pension is a route to retirement, but often it’s not the only way to get there. Here’s what pensions are, how they work and options if you don’t have access to a pension plan — or if the payouts will be too small to live off of in retirement. What is

Shake Shack, one of the many storefront businesses boarded in downtown Brooklyn over the fears of looting. Erik McGregor | Getty Images Just looking at the earnings for Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, you might get the impression that everything is going swimmingly for second- and third-quarter earnings. But that’s not the case. “We continue to

Merrill Lynch is pausing client prospecting for its roughly 3,000 advisor trainees for a few weeks to provide new training on technology and procedures, according to an internal memo. The firm’s training program, dubbed Financial Advisor Development Program, is one of the largest on the Street and lasts approximately 40 months. The pause will effectively

Vanguard is closer to launching the robo technology for advisors it has been building for more than a year. The $5 trillion asset manager is in the testing phase for its new advice software for planners, says Tom Rampulla, managing director of Vanguard’s Financial Advisor Services division, who spoke on a webcast with financial advisors

Innocent spouse relief is a way to avoid paying additional tax you might owe the IRS if your spouse or ex-spouse made significant errors on your joint tax return. Here’s how innocent spouse relief works, and how you can get it. What is innocent spouse relief? On joint tax returns, both filers are generally responsible

GDP down by 32.9%. Double-digit unemployment. Alarming new coronavirus mortality highs. And most financial advisors isolated at home under quarantine. So how has this bleak picture impacted RIAs’ hiring plans for 2020? The answer: Not that much. “Astute RIA leaders recognize that now is an opportunity for growth,” says Catharine Aguilar, chief marketing officer for

The U.S. economy suffered its sharpest downturn since at least the 1940s in the second quarter, highlighting how the pandemic has ravaged businesses across the country and left millions of Americans out of work. Gross domestic product shrank 9.5% in the second quarter from the first, a drop that equals an annualized pace of 32.9%,