If you stop to think about it, there are a number of surprising parallels between the medical and financial-advisory professions. Both remedy issues vital to long-term happiness: health and wealth. Both require highly technical knowledge, coupled...
Last month this space was devoted to the benefits and drawbacks of using immediate annuities for retiring clients. My well-reasoned and humble conclusion was that the lure of income you can't outlive has to be balanced against the finality of...
Have you ever wondered what makes people great? It's a timeless question, really, but one that philosophers and researchers (and authors like Jim Collins, who wrote Good to Great) are still struggling to answer today. Over at the Oechsli Institute...
In late 2004, Chuck Schwab looked me in the eye and declared that U.S. Trust was not for sale. It had been his idea to buy the trust-services shop, and he would see it through, he said. In my book about Schwab, and in subsequent articles, I had...
Last month, Smith Barney overhauled its pay package—just in time for the new year. Some of the changes it made were pretty radical—especially for an industry in which any pay change, no matter how minor, is often a source of uproar...
In October, Bank of America offered free trading to its banking clients with more than $25,000 in deposits. Just another shot fired in the online price war or something more?
Charles Schwab is getting back to basics—well, in as far as you can call investors with $50,000 to $2 million in assets “basics.” With its recently announced plans to sell U.S. Trust to Bank of America, the firm has decided to...
You’ve probably heard of Chris Gardner by now—homeless man turned-stockbroker-turned brokerage firm founder. (We wrote about Gardner in our July 2006 issue.) If you haven’t, the largely true tale starring Will Smith and his real-life son, Jaden...
