The top 50 financial advisors at Merrill Lynch aren’t happy with the wording of their retention package, and they’ve taken the first step towards getting changes made by collectively hiring a lawyer.
If tested, most financial advisors worth their proverbial salt could pass a final exam for Beginning 529 Plans without much cramming beforehand. But clients saving for college have the unfortunate habit of posing problems that go beyond the...
Smart decisions are based on more than government statistics, agency reports, news releases, interest rates and stock quotes. We've selected a few fascinating statistics here that illuminate the markets, the world of financial services and big...
The events on Wall Street over the past six months, coupled with the toll they have taken on many advisors, have caused me to revisit the work of William Glasser, M.D. and his thoughts on human behavior. In his book Control Theory (1984, Harper...
Ever since brokers started swapping shares under that buttonwood tree in lower Manhattan, parallels have been drawn between Wall Street and the casino. Wall Street itself recognizes the similarities. Many proprietary trading firms, in fact...
Talk about going from bad to worse. To optimistic insiders who bought shares of their own banking companies over the last 12 months, the stocks must have felt like falling knives. Indeed, the entire financial system seems to be falling apart so...
Staying on top of new industry rules and regulations is one of the greatest challenges facing registered reps and their supervisors these days. Overnight, long-established practices become violations because of an incomprehensible subparagraph to...
I have a friend, a financial advisor, who keeps what he calls The Yell-At-Tom Index. (His name is Tom.) Interestingly, The Yell-At-Tom Index (TYAT) is low right now, he says. That's right. Despite the utter carnage in the equity markets, the...