Finance

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.

Regulators may be more open to selling failed banks to nontraditional owners — or maybe there are just fewer buyers.

When don’t you ask for referrals? In these three scenarios.

It hopes to double the number of banks, trusts, and advisory firms it assists in meeting the investment needs of the very wealthy.