Kuwait. Singapore. Russia. China. The government investment funds of these countries, and several others, may have saved our financial system from severe shock. Following over $100 billion in write-downs at the country's biggest banks due to bad...
The SEC voted in February to propose changes to the structure of the Form ADV, the disclosure document that all investment advisors must complete. Instead of the current online check-the-box format, investment advisors would be required to create...
One more time: Retail investors your clients are confused about the definition of a financial advisor. That is, they don't understand the difference between a Series 7 registered representative and a Series 65 investment advisor representative...
Business - purposeful activity. Plan - a method for achieving an end. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary In the early months of a new year, I have always found it helpful to take a quick reassessment of one's current business plan to use NASCAR...
Let's review three irrefutable truths: The affluent do not like sales people. Too many veteran advisors have neglected their sales skills. Advisors possessing high-level sales skills can take affluent clients from anybody. Although few would...
Are you targeting the affluent? Are you interested in acquiring clients with larger pools of assets? Of course you are. Every financial advisor is aiming for larger client accounts these days, and in particular, they are trying to capture a piece...
Here's one way to evaluate equity research: Measure the impact it has on stock prices. Bespoke Investment Group, a financial research firm, did just that, and apparently, Robert W. Baird takes top honors. Out of 16 firms, Baird's upgrades impacted...
There is such a thing as the affluent touch: It's a matter of attitude and approach. In fact, this quality is often the very thing that makes one financial advisor more successful at courting the affluent than another. But it's not terribly...
About the current credit market turmoil, Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in early September, The behavior in what we are observing in the last seven weeks is identical in many respects to what we saw in 1998, what we saw in the...
