The proposed FINRA rule would change current practice-which renders arbitrations a virtual black box in which the arbitrators need not explain how they decide a case.

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...

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...

In July 2007, his firm, Bear Stearns, announced that two of its flagship hedge funds had collapsed. Not surprisingly, clients weren't too happy about that. Many of Sharon's clients contacted him to express grievances about their losses, and...

Johnne Syverson, co-founder of RIA firm Syverson Strege & Company, in West Des Moines, Iowa, has been outsourcing money-manager selection and portfolio construction to SEI since 1995. The firm, which manages $300 million in assets, has three CFAs...

Below is the transcript of an affidavit from a case in which Bear Stearns attempted to impose a temporary restraining order on departed broker Doug Sharon. Sharon left for Morgan Stanley on March 17 the day after J.P. Morgan made a deal to buy the...

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...