Registered Rep. spoke with Dimitroff about a second round of proposed revisions to the CFP Board's Code of Ethics. Registered Rep.: Why do the new revisions make a distinction between fiduciary duty (required of CFPs who offer financial planning)...

Nothing was settled, really, when the SEC rubberstamped the revised so-called Merrill Lynch rule. That rule took effect last year and provided an exemption for broker/dealers from the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. But the age-old debate between...

Let's say you just read a letter from the NASD, and it seems that they are preparing to charge you with a regulatory violation. You want to fight it but are willing to consider a fair settlement offer. Murray, your office's water-cooler know-it...

It used to be that ETFs were linked to some broad market, cap-weighted index simple as that. These days, ETFs come in all kinds of flavors, leveraged and inverse, commodity and currency as well as other ETFs ones that base weightings on some...

Firms are paying gigantic transition packages these days, but they are cutting corners when they bring a new financial on board: There is an almost complete absence of so-called on-boarding, or integration training for new hires, in the brokerage...

During the Q&A following a keynote speech I gave in Boston, one advisor asked, What does your research tell you about the level of trust the affluent have toward financial advisors? He then added a loaded follow-up question: And which firm truly...

Another study looking at why women are so scarce on Wall Street has found some interesting (and surprising) results. Entitled Gender and Job Performance: Evidence from Wall Street, the study, by a trio of professors from Goizueta Business School...

Last year was a blockbuster for merger-and-acquisition activity in the asset-management sector buyers spent nearly $44 billion to purchase 191 firms managing more than $2.6 trillion, according to a recent research report from investment bank...

Big Blue announced mid-March that it has hired Fidelity Investments and The Ayco Company (a Goldman Sachs subsidiary) to offer financial advice to its U.S. employees. IBM's move may be a first for a major U.S. company. After all, we're talking...

If you're like some advisors, you think of your clients' children only when you need some idle chit-chat to fill gaps in otherwise productive conversations. (Or you may view the kids as decadent descendants, draining the parents' portfolio faster...