When it Began, the credit crisis had little to do with retail brokerage. After all, the fixed income departments were the ones who made the bad mortgage bets that have since unraveled, resulting in a pileup of more than $200 billion dollars in...

Alden Cass is a clinical psychologist who specializes in financial-services employees. Below, the Stock Doc speaks. Registered Rep.: In your book, Bullish Thinking, you state there is a problem with depression among financial advisors. Why is that...

Dodge & Cox is not famous for making dramatic contrarian moves. Instead, the company's funds have become popular by following cautious strategies, such as buying securities. But recently Dodge & Cox International Stock announced a change in policy...

Given a choice, most of your clients would rather pay for their kids' college education from accumulated savings or an overabundance of current income (if not a full ride based on the child's expertise at Guitar Hero). But when those sources of...

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...

New York City's Independent Budget Office estimates that the city could lose over 20,000 jobs in the financial sector over the next two years as the mortgage credit crisis squeezes Wall Street profits. New York Stock Exchange member firms that...

Are closed-end fund preferred-auction securities safe? We consider CFPs to be the conservative's conservative security. Defaults are even rarer than failed auctions. We are comfortable with the safety of auction securities from closed-end funds...

In February, stock fund investors did a curious thing. Instead of running for the exits as the S&P 500 continued falling, they pumped large sums of new money into U.S. and international stock funds. Are investors getting smarter, buying when the...