If ever there were a poster woman for the perils of sudden wealth, it would have to be our latest reality television star, Anna Nicole Smith. In 14 months of marriage to her late billionaire husband, Smith managed to spend $6.7 million on clothes...

Although everybody is saying, Well, discounting is just a couple of small firms and it doesn't really affect us, I suspect that it's to become a bigger factor with the passing of time[The rep] is either going to perform a full service for his...

Gross revenues fell by 25 percent for NYSE member broker/dealers in the last year and a half, dropping to a five-year low of $36.3 billion in the third quarter. Pre-tax profits are still dropping, too: Profits were estimated to be $1.1 billion in...

Every broker has heard a story like this one. Recently, Tom Mingone, a financial planner in New City, N.Y., got a call from a new prospect. The man, a successful entrepreneur in his late 40s, had sold his sanitation business for $1 million and...

Is it time to check out small cap and micro cap stocks and managers? Merrill Lynch recently announced that it would no longer make a market in anything but the 2,400 biggest, most actively traded Nasdaq issues. It's the perfect contrarian...

When a business partnership is new and everybody is toasting the new team, nobody thinks much about the legal agreements the partners just signed. In the subsequent months, even years, these documents tend to gather dust in a drawer. However, once...

You know him: The Trust-Fund Brat the party-hearty, layabout rich kid who never made a dime in his life and scoffs at the word The type of guy that might be inclined to ditch his dorm room and blow the endowment on Porsche, Prada and Paris. The...

National Financial Partners, the independent financial services company headed by Jessica Bibliowicz, wants to raise capital so it can add to its list of 100 small firms targeting high-net-worth clients. The company says it intends to go public...

Iam intimately familiar with the concept of consultative selling. Back when I was peddling a large-cap core manager as a wholesaler, I tried to fashion myself into just such a person, a consultant, a real go-to guy. Alas, the world is a much...

Looking for a job, but afraid you'll be found out? A new Web site, privateclientpro.net, provides a fast, anonymous and comprehensive listing of opportunities. So far, only Boston area jobs are listed, but the site's creator, Consultants Period, a...