Investment insights

As retail funds for alternative investments become more widespread, planners must explain their purpose in a portfolio.

MLPs offer high yields plus tax advantages, but advisors need to drill down to deliver those tax breaks without the headaches.

Muni bonds have substantial risk but here’s how you may be able to get a greater return and U.S. government guarantee.

A bond ladder can mitigate interest rate risk, but individual bonds require in-depth research. The diversification of a fund tempers credit risk, but be wary of extended duration.

But beware, moves made in a portfolio should always take into consideration the client’s risk tolerance and long-term goals.

Rolling redemptions offer reinvestment opportunities in longer-term, presumably higher-yielding bonds.

The world’s most profitable securities firm before the financial crisis said earnings were little changed as the bank cut costs in response to a 20% drop in revenue.

The firm told clients its money-market funds aren’t holding Treasuries that mature in the next month as Congress debates whether to raise the U.S. debt ceiling.

There are many ways to tilt portfolios toward small cap and value. Here are three alternatives for portfolio construction.

The work that earned Eugene Fama the Nobel Prize in economics provided the intellectual foundation for index-tracking funds, which have upended stock picking as investors abandon active money managers.

With markets moving swiftly, advisors sometimes rebalance more than once a year.

Here’s how to build a diversified portfolio with just a few low-cost funds. It’s the ultimate conclusion from Modern Portfolio Theory.

Because excess capital losses can be carried forward to future tax returns, with no expiration date, clients can use this “bank” of losses to offset future net capital gains.

High income can only come with high risk, a lesson investors learned painfully in 2008. Here’s a better way to think about fixed income.

Using mostly passive strategies results in lower fees and better performance, but there are cases where active management can add value.

The crisis represents a call for advisors to offer the one thing most individual investors can't provide for themselves: an objective, experienced and unemotional perspective, unclouded by fear and based instead upon short- and long-term goals.

Bill Gross, who has been telling investors to favor short-term Treasuries, is following through on his own advice as longer-maturity bonds suffer their biggest losses in four years.

Here are some of the smartest things heard -- and tweeted -- from Tuesday's conference hosted by financial advisors and bloggers Barry Ritholtz and Josh Brown in New York City.

Municipal analysts and strategists are looking in the health care and housing industries and at credits with intermediate maturities for potential bargains that may be created by irrational fears over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling.

With the size of the exchange-traded product market expanding rapidly each year, it is important for advisors to understand exactly what they are purchasing.