Dave Lindorff

There is a lot of concern among investors about the looming Aug. 2 debt ceiling crisis, but Fred Dickson, chief investment strategist at D.A. Davidson, said everyone just needs to relax.

The rating agency Moody’s this week announced that it is placing five of the 15 states with triple-A ratings on review for possible downgrade because of the growing possibility of a downgrade in the U.S. sovereign AAA rating.

When financial advisors are working with clients to figure out their retirement strategy, they need to factor in inflation into the mix. But the question is, how does one decide what inflation is likely to be years into the future when there are so many different ways to measure it even in the present?

Bond investors have been put on notice by rating agency Standard & Poor's that it is not just the U.S. sovereign debt rating that is in jeopardy because of the ongoing wrangling in Washington over raising -- or not raising -- the federal debt ceiling and, especially, whether or how lawmakers cut the government’s massive and ever-growing deficit.

So far so good. That’s the word from the Council of Institutional Investors, a non-profit association of pension funds, retirement funds, endowments and foundations, regarding the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act passed by Congress and signed into law a year ago this week.

Putting aside the debt ceiling drama currently playing out in Washington and the dire predictions of what would happen to the U.S. and the global economy if the ceiling isn’t raised by Aug. 2, Goldman Sachs’ chief U.S. economist said that even if all that doesn’t come to pass, the U.S. economy will still slow this year and next and puts the chances of a return to recession somewhere between 15% and 20%.

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney is laying off financial advisors, but the big bank denies that it has any major layoff planned, as was reported earlier this week by Fox Business News.

Now that Standard & Poor's has issued a negative credit watch on U.S. government debt and acknowledged the possibility that no deal will be reached to raise the government’s debt ceiling, what should investors do?

For years, PIMCO’s taxable bond Total Return Fund (PTTRX) has been a top-performer in its class, with five-star ratings from both Morningstar and S&P, five-year annualized trailing returns of 8.9%, and a manager, William Gross, widely respected as among one of the top in industry.

Moody’s and S&P are warning they may soon downgrade the United States’ coveted AAA sovereign debt rating if the debt ceiling isn’t raised or if the country misses any debt payments or fails to meet obligations like distributing Social Security checks, but at least one credit rating firm appears to have reached the end of its patience.

Schwab Advisor Services this week introduced a new software application called LaserApp that lets advisors automatically load new client data onto 80 different Schwab forms.

Some may wonder how a watchdog with no head can do much watching, but that’s the current state of affairs as the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the administrations key financial reform programs coming out of the 2008 financial crisis, officially opens for business on July 21.

Too many investors and even their financial advisors are not paying enough attention to “what’s under the hood” of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that have become so popular with investors in the past two or three years, according to S&P equity analyst Todd Rosenbluth.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is fining Philadelphia broker-dealer Janney Montgomery Scott LLC for “failing to establish and enforce policies and procedures to prevent the misuse of material non-public information, as required by law.”

After a period of booming sales in first quarter of 2011, annuity sales through banks have fallen off significantly, according to a new report by Kehrer-LIMRA, the banking industry research unit of LIMRA.

The tech team at Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services has come up with a new way to help prevent independent financial advisors from enjoying their vacations: a new smartphone app that allows them to open client accounts and do electronic trading for clients from anywhere.

Half an hour after Labor Secretary Hilda Solis announced that only 18,000 new jobs were created in June, investors sold off their shares in disappointment. But the actual and final new-jobs figure won't be known for months, meaning the dispiriting figures could be off by as much as 100,000 jobs in either direction.

Late last year, prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney warned investors that between 50 and 100 municipalities were headed for default and that the carnage would cost investors hundreds of billions of dollars. But at the midway point of 2011, that's hardly been the case.

Wealth management firms are risking losing clients to competitors, losing a chance to gain new business through client referrals and are missing opportunities to deepen relationships with existing high-net-worth investors, according to a new study by Aite Group, an independent Boston-based research and advisory firm focused on the financial services industry.

According to a new Barclay's Wealth report, emotional trading can cost even the most well-heeled investor about 20% in returns over a decade. Still many persist in making too many trades in the pursuit of huge returns.