Knowing the best strategy to recommend to families in every financial situation requires either an encyclopedic knowledge of tax, investment, and legal matters or a crystal ball. The former can take decades to accumulate, and the latter is even...
Independent advisors aren't feeling so hot about the U.S. economic or political landscape. About 33 percent of those polled by Schwab Institutional in July said the S&P 500 won't rise in the next six months, while 66 percent said the country will...
Growth can be a conundrum for many independent investment advisors: How to achieve it? How to manage it? How to survive it? It's the classic tale for today's financial advisory business. As a firm principal, you see the opportunities in front of...
After 17 years with Fidelity, Ellyn McColgan stepped down as president of Fidelity Investments distribution and operations, which includes Fidelity Registered Investment Advisor Group (FRIAG), the RIA custodian arm of the mutual fund giant. The...
In 2002, together with fifteen colleagues, Mark Feldman fled the rapidly imploding accounting firm Arthur Anderson, where he and the others worked in the firm's financial advisory unit. Feldman and his friends promptly launched a registered...
A new study suggests that the securities arbitration system is seriously flawed, because it's unfair to retail clients. It's an argument that has long been made by investor advocates, of course, and even some securities lawyers and state...
Among other initiatives for 2007, Morgan Stanley is planning to upgrade its financial-planning offering for retail advisors—and apparently it’s overdue.
Two years into his career as a fullback with the Miami Dolphins, Rob Konrad was in the locker room after practice when a teammate, a fellow young player, started talking about some of his Konrad, who had majored in finance at Syracuse University...
George Martin knows football. He played with the New York Giants for 14 years and holds the record for most touchdowns by a defensive lineman. Martin didn't know as much about finance, so in the mid '80s when someone purporting to be a financial...
