Portfolio

Financial Planning’s 2011 ranking of the biggest independent broker-dealers

The Federal Reserve will not officially launch a third round of quantitative easing to help boost the flagging economy, but will rely instead on a “magical weapon” -- the language of its policy statements to try to keep interest rates historically low for an extended period, PIMCO money management titan Bill Gross said Wednesday at the Morningstar Investment Conference.

Investors concerned that the equities markets and the economy seem to be hitting a soft patch might think about looking at stocks that have a long history of paying dividends.

I just got back from my yearly pilgrimage to the Northern California regional conference in San Francisco, which is always one of the best financial planning meetings of the year, and two interesting nuggets caught my eye.

TIAA-CREF has launched the TIAA-CREF Lifecycle 2055 Fund, a target-date fund aimed at those who are 18 to 22 years of age and destined to leave the workforce in or around 2055.

Assets flowed out of ETFs in May, the first time flows have reversed direction since August 2010, according to State Street Global Advisors, which just released its latest Snapshot report tracking ETF funds.

Rule changes brought on by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act are expected to produce the most change in the way trading in contracts involving interest-rate commitments.

Following passage of a new state law aimed at assuaging investor fears of bankruptcy, the city of Ecorse next week will sell $9.3 million of financial recovery bonds, making it one of Michigan’s only municipalities to enter the bond market while under state-controlled receivership.

When the Build America Bond program ended there were two schools of thought. One argued that BABs would become an orphan class, with prices in the secondary market suffering from illiquidity. Another group thought there would be some scarcity value to the product and they would appreciate in value.

A new report from MetLife this week suggests that financial advisors need to do a better job of educating their clients about the importance of managing their emotions as well as their spending and investing behavior during and close to retirement just as they did -- presumably -- when they were younger and saving up for their golden years.