ETF fund assets and numbers continue to soar in 2008. As of May 31, there were 683 ETFs in the U.S., with assets totaling approximately $612 billion. ETF industry assets rose nearly $17 billion for the month of May, buoyed by positive performance...

They've got a lot of competition these days from so-called alternatives like ETFs and other products, many of which have been quickly lapping up new assets in recent years. But mutual funds' all-out dominance of the vast U.S. investment universe...

For 25 years, Alan Gladstone picked individual stocks for clients. Then five years ago, Gladstone, a senior vice president and financial advisor for Morgan Stanley, began switching to exchange-traded funds. Today nearly all his client assets are...

Now that the Baby Boomer generation is retiring in droves, fund companies are focusing on a thorny question: How can retirees obtain reliable income from their investments? Since September, half a dozen companies including Russell, DWS Scudder and...

There was a time when the institutional side of a securities firm would walk with a swagger. After all, it was you, the retail financial advisor, who was stuck making presentations at a coffee table with mom-and-pops. Institutional brokers...

Sports and financial markets have more than a little in common. Just as a sports contest takes several innings or quarters to develop, bulls and bears tug and pull upon an asset's price, and when one side starts to win, a trend is created over...

John Ritter is an unusual case, but he may also be a harbinger of things to come. A fee-only advisor with Ritter Daniher Financial Advisory, an RIA in Cincinnati, Ritter has over $2 million of client assets in annuities, and says he plans to put...

During the heyday of paper assets, stockbrokers regularly lorded over their commodity-dealing brethren. It wasn't personal, mind you, just the nature of the business. Stock jockeys were making commissions hand over fist, leaving commodities...

In September 2006, an SEC official gave a remarkably prescient speech to an obscure organization (well, obscure to me, anyway). Martha Mahan Haines, chief of the SEC's Office of Municipal Securities, presented a short speech to about 400 women...

Despite current laws that reduce the estate-tax bite, survivorship life insurance is making a comeback as an estate-planning tool among some advisors. With Democrats in control of Congress, and a good chance that a Democrat will take the White...