Finance

The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the health care overhaul could have a broad impact on wealthy investors’ wallets with a new 3.8% increase on investment income.

The surprisingly weak U.S. jobs report in March showed that the U.S. has not fully turned the corner on job growth. Non-farm payrolls rose by 120,000, the worst performance in more than a year. This slow recovery is not unexpected after a financial crisis, and there are many other bright spots in the economy. However, some argue that the unemployment numbers are actually worse than reported—an ongoing controversy not likely to be resolved in the near future.

Shoe leather isn’t always enough to build a book of business, particularly for young advisors starting out. Doug Leonzi, No. 22 on BIC’s Top 50 Bank Rep list, reflects on the importance of a senior advisor who crossed his path.

Whether or not you work for a best practice firm, it pays to manage your book to maximize its value.

The graying of the workforce is a problem for banks, but an opportunity for bank advisors, young and old, if they think ahead. Enterprising bank advisors planning to retire can buddy up with younger advisors and put them in place as potential successors. Both senior and junior advisors will win from teaming up.

Organization wants to dispel 'conventional wisdom that it's a solution in search of a problem.'


Sharing select personal details can help advisors win over prospects, one planner says at TD Ameritrade conference.

Understand the three levels of happiness and be ready to connect them with their financial-planning equivalents.

Chief Market Strategist Douglas Coté said record levels of earnings, an all-time record high of aggregate consumer spending, and booming production by companies like Caterpillar are reasons for optimism.

The Federal Reserve Board said it will sell $400 billion in short-term Treasuries for longer-term holdings by 2012 as its latest effort to kick start the economy.

Last year, BNY Mellon Wealth Management was on an ambitious push to expand its network of financial advisors. Whether Robert Kelly’s surprise resignation late Wednesday will derail that momentum remains unclear at this point.

Citing "regulations written for banking institutions," the insurance giant has put its $16 billion-asset depository on the block. MetLife, which ranks among the top 15 home lenders, would continue writing mortgages. But it would do so as part of the so-called shadow banking system.

Forget all that money the Federal Reserve has been printing and all the borrowing the U.S. Treasury has been doing and continues to do. Inflation, at least in the short term, has peaked, according to Morningstar’s director of economic analysis Robert Johnson.

On Friday, at the Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago the CEO of BlackRock, Laurence Fink, said US economic growth could be slashed 1% a year for the next ten years if the deficit is cut by $4 trillion as proposed.

The unexpected death of a husband or a recent divorce may mean that a woman is suddenly making all financial decisions.

Despite a pretax loss this quarter by its Americas wealth management unit, UBS AG, Switzerland’s largest bank, recorded a $1.71 billion net profit and diluted earnings per share of $0.44.

Michael Lynch, head of execution services for the Americas at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, spoke about some of the issues concerning the markets and investors, as well as the future of electronic trading.

If regulators had used the tests to prod European banks to raise capital, American institutions might soon be trading, and competing, with stronger peers across the Atlantic.

Even as top Senate Banking Committee leaders appear close to striking a final compromise on a regulatory reform bill, some Democrats continue to try and push the legislation further to the left.

When the White House first announced a plan to ban banks from proprietary trading in January, reaction from both political parties made it appear dead on arrival. Yet, to the surprise of the industry representatives, the so-called Volcker Rule has persisted in the Senate's version of regulatory reform, even if doubts about its effectiveness persist.