Ruthie Ackerman

After improving a bit in July, The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index tumbled in August as Americans held tight to their wallets, worried the economy was heading towards another recession.

Despite the continued frenzy of fear that has whiplashed the stock market recently, John Coyne, President of Brinker Capital, says that the U.S. economy's fundamentals are strong.

Only 49% of those with a financial advisor and a financial plan have discussed life insurance with their advisor, according to a survey released on Monday by Saybrus Partners.

As trading opens on another nervous week on Wall Street, mainstream investors are casting their votes on prospects by racing out of mutual funds that invest in stocks long-term.

Investors took money out of U.S. bond and stock mutual funds because of the increase in economic uncertainty in July, according to research released on Friday by Strategic Insight.

As global economic uncertainty grows, executives at private companies have grown less optimistic, although they have continued to spend money to improve their businesses, according to PwC US’s Private Company Trendsetter Barometer released on Thursday.

The recent rollercoaster ride in the stock market is not only impacting investors, but also the U.S. IPO market in the second half of 2011, according to PwC US.

Investors feel they don’t have “personal relationships” with their wealth managers despite the fact that wealth managers consistently brand themselves as being in the “relationship” business, according to a poll released on Tuesday by SEI Global Wealth Service.

A UBS Wealth Management Americas survey released on Friday reveals that investors may be more worried about the debt ceiling crisis than politicians are aware.

U.S. ETFs are on a roll so far in 2011, according to State Street Global Advisors, which released its 2011 mid-year ETF outlook report on Thursday.

A Fidelity Investments survey released on Thursday found that a majority of Americans do not understand how their pensions work.

A new study released by LIMRA and the LIFE Foundation on Wednesday found that Americans, especially those who are younger, prefer to buy life insurance via the Internet, mail or by phone.

On Wednesday, LPL Investment Holdings Inc., parent of independent U.S. broker-dealer LPL Financial, reported a jump in second-quarter earnings as advisors continued to grow assets despite the challenging stock market and economic environment.

While the wealth management industry remained challenged in 2010, the majority of financial advisors are optimistic about 2011, according to a new report from Aite Group.

Raymond James announced on Monday it nabbed a $500 million team from Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in Newtown, Pennsylvania.

Advisors are more confident than they have been since January, but they still report being concerned over the disconnect in the marketplace, according to The Advisor Confidence Index (ACI), a benchmark that gauges advisor views on the U.S. economy and stock market.

After all the blood, sweat and tears that has gone into the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, a new survey revealed that almost half of all bankers do not think it will help prevent risks to the financial system.

TD Ameritrade Institutional has been the beneficiary of the breakaway broker trend as advisors flock to independence amid continuing regulatory worries.

Institutional investment managers were more risk averse in the second quarter of 2011 as worry over the economy increased, yet almost three-quarters were optimistic about job growth and over half expect corporate earnings to grow in the short term, according to a survey released on Monday by Northern Trust.

On Friday TNS released a new study that revealed that 87% of Americans with $500,000 or more in investable assets feel that the size of the US government's deficit is a major concern for them.