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The latest entrant into the wealth management arena comes not from Wall Street but from just outside Silicon Valley, and is taking dead aim at the Internet brokerage space for higher-end investors with a slick Web-based dashboard, holistic account monitoring and a stable of financial advisors to complement the technology with a human touch.

Employees who are automatically enrolled in target-date funds when they are signed up for a 401(k) plan are very likely to stick with the target date investment strategy for the long haul, according to a study conducted by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).

Raymond James isn’t likely to be a buyer for Region’s Financial’s Morgan Keegan unit. In an interview at the 17th annual Raymond James Women’s Symposium Thursday morning, two Raymond James executives said that there was too much overlap between their firm and Morgan Keegan -- even though it was attractive.

Putnam Investments has developed a new website for financial advisers featuring sophisticated, open-architecture portfolio modeling tools (www.putnam.com/advisor). The site builds upon a series of practice management recommendations, links to Putnam’s social media sites, articles and videos of the company’s investment professionals discussing their investment outlook and the firm’s analytical tool FundVisualizer, which can model a portfolio from a universe of more than 11,000 mutual funds and ETFs.

Morningstar will begin ranking and researching managed ETF portfolios by the end of the year, the research firm announced at its second annual ETF Invest Conference in Chicago Thursday.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index rose 0.3% in August, following a 0.6% gain in July and a 0.3% increase in June.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, Japan was on a roll. They had one of the highest economic growth rates in the world. Their manufacturing prowess grew to be the envy of the world. Their stock market soared 373 percent between 1980 and its peak in 1989. And, like China today, there were predictions that Japan would overtake the United States as the largest economy in the world. But, as The Prosperous Advisor Steve Sanduski points out, times sure have changed.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch wealth management executive John Thiel unveiled a new plan that restructures the firm’s U.S. wealth management business in a memo to employees on Wednesday.

As Barings Bank, Societe Generale and now UBS have found, much to their dismay, it’s hard to stop a trader from getting out of control if he knows the inner workings of both your front office and back office.

Guggenheim Partners and Rydex/SGI announced that Guggenheim will acquire Rydex in the first quarter of 2012 and combine its asset management capabilities under the name Guggenheim Investments. Once the deal is closed, Guggenheim Investments will have $119 billion of assets under management. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.