Investment insights

Some retirees regret past decisions based on greed, others for tinkering too much with their portfolios or keeping too much cash on hand; Plus, how to max out Social Security benefits.

The broker involved in the dispute invested 40% of the clients' assets in short positions in U.S. Treasury bonds betting that interest rates and inflation would rise.

Conventional wisdom says investors should reduce equities in their portfolios as they age, but a study takes a contrary view; Plus, more information doesn't necessarily make for better investment decisions.

An analysis compares portfolios built using 'smart beta' indexes against those whose components are weighted by market cap. See the results.

So-called experts tend to do a lousy job predicting the direction of the economy or the stock market. Here's what advisors should do about it.

Some varieties of charitable remainder trusts can be tailored to donors' income needs.

Since the crisis, banks have relied on lower loan-loss provisions to make a profit. But banks actually made money in the third quarter. Here's how.

By making gifts through donor-advised funds, clients can get a tax break while still supporting an international charitable cause.

The share of families with an individual account retirement plan such as an IRA or 401(k) is decreasing, but the assets in those plans are increasing, according to a new study.

By making gifts through donor-advised funds, clients can get a tax break while still supporting an international charitable cause.

Millennial women are making great strides in the workforce, but still "channel their inner ninth grade insecure freshman when it comes to financial matters," according to Fidelity's head of personal investing.

One is to check how much you've contributed to your 401(k) plans and IRAs; plus, how to determine the "funded status" of personal retirement plans and the steps to take to ease post-career anxiety.

Understand the most common behavioral financial biases -- and know how to confront them when your clients are trying to sabotage their own portfolios.

Many investors would like to own high-yielding stocks that have very low risk. Unfortunately, in the real world, such beasts are extremely rare. The following 10 stocks are the current yield champs in the S&P 500 index.

The $3.7 trillion municipal market is on pace for its first monthly loss of 2014, and trailing gains in Treasuries amid a glut of issuance by states and localities.

The two self-regulators are proposing rules that would require dealers as principals to disclose to customers a “reference price” of the same security traded that same day as well as the difference between that price and the customer’s price.

The timing is right to put MLPs to work for your client, as long as you fully grasp the nuances of these sometimes confusing and volatile investment vehicles.

Clients report Social Security's employees being uninformed of the agency's rules, or worse, providing wrong information; Plus, the downside of target-date funds

Changes in the industry confront asset managers on several fronts. Michael Rawson, an analyst covering passive strategies on Morningstar's manager research team, shares his expectations on the outcomes these industry shifts will bring.

Materially, reinvested dividends have accounted for slightly more than 40% of the market's annualized total return from 1926 through June this year.