Portfolio

New stock valuation tools could elevate discussions with clients.

While variable annuity sales eke out a 3% gain, all other areas suffer significant declines.

A booming time for exciting variable annuity riders must give way to a new era of stabilization and rationalization.

Bank-based advisors produced an average $16,728 in December, up from just $14,712 in November.

Nearly two-thirds of current ETF owners bought the funds on their own. More than a quarter of them have advisors—they’re just not using them.

Cumberland Offers Safer Strategy

New York State will cease investigation into the December 2007 sale of auction-rate securities by UBS' former head of municipal securities.

Exchange-traded funds, once the province only of institutional investors, are increasingly resonating with wealthy investors, The Wall Street Journal reports.

American Funds has sold $187 million, or 99% of its original $190 million, holdings via three mutual funds in PetroChina shares, a company Investors Against Genocide has railed against for funding genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. The latest SEC filings show the fund company’s holdings as of Dec. 31 at a mere $2.7 million.

Firms need to beef up customer service staffing and most of them are woefully unprepared for these changes.