It's hard to pick a great mutual fund. By now, everyone knows that past performance is no guarantee of future performance. But, somehow, the editors at The No-Load Fund Investor make it look easy with a somewhat naive and speculative strategy that...

Steve Burnett, the president of Sacramento, Calif.-based Hanson McClain, once went to a client's house to get some information about the stocks he held. Burnett soon discovered a most peculiar form of record keeping. In one room, hanging from wall...

Clients are bombarding you with cost-basis questions. There's a steady stream of new directives from It's becoming impossible to find a couple hours a day to figure out the office's NCAA pool. But it might behoove you to put down the brackets and...

My father and I had the same reaction when we looked at our copies of The New York Times on a Saturday morning at the end of January. On the front page, just above the fold, was an article entitled, A Contrarian View: Save Less and Still Retire...

Ask five reps what they consider the most important feature at an independent broker/dealer and chances are they will give you five different answers. To put it simply, individual reps have individual needs. They have different ideal clients...

Nearly everybody seems to complain about arbitration (well, accept for the firms). In late January, the SEC tried to help improve the system by offering a new code of procedures for picking arbitrators. But as arbitration lawyers began examining...

For several years, Regal Securities, a Glenview, Ill.-based brokerage firm, handled its clearing in-house. But, then the firm handed off the job of settling trades and other back-office functions to Fiserv. At first it was a relief having a large...

When she was brought in to run Smith Barney back in 2002, Sallie Krawcheck was heralded as a savior the single best person possible to buff Smith Barney's tarnished reputation. And sure enough, she met the challenge. By the time she was pulled off...

Working as a financial advisor is a pretty sweet gig. A recent survey conducted by Money magazine and Salary.com ranked financial advisor as third-best job in the U.S., behind software engineer and college professor. The report cites lucrative pay...

Retail investors are notorious for chasing performance, and they may be at it once again. Over the last three years, foreign mutual funds have posted annual returns twice those notched by the S&P 500, prompting investors to dump shares of U.S...