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U.S. stocks gained ground Monday despite a troubling report that Standard & Poor’s would soon put “several” Eurozone countries on a “creditwatch negative” alert even though German and French officials said they had hammered out a European debt plan that would restrict future deficits without throwing the continent’s economy into a tailspin.

If it looks too good to be true, it is. That appears to be the stance that will be taken by the SEC when it comes to investigating the fraudulent activities of hedge fund advisors as evidenced by its recent enforcement action against three separate firms and six individuals.

Financial Planning columnist Bob Veres says advisors need to understand what could happen if FINRA becomes their regulator.

For the first time since the end of April, investors pulled more money out of exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded notes than they put in, resulting in a net outflow of $238 million for the month, according to the National Stock Exchange.

Unemployment among Americans without college educations is now in the mid-teens, says Goldman Sachs investment strategist Abby Joseph Cohen. But there are unrecognized strengths in exports and equities that should be recognized in investing in a recovery.

Tablets have fundamentally changed the way financial advisors do their work and there’s every reason to believe they will continue to be the dominant tool of choice in the advisory community for years to come.

Ahead of the Department of Labor’s anticipated proposal to redefine fiduciary responsibility, expected sometime in 2012, 55 House Republicans sent a letter asking for more careful consideration of the effects on consumer choice before any new rule is proposed.

Neuberger Berman has placed Fayad Abbasi, an analyst at the center of a federal insider-trading probe, on paid leave.

Since the financial crisis and Great Recession, 401(k) plans have undergone dramatic shifts. To foster diversification and greater participation, 51% of participants in Fidelity Investments' 401(k) plans are in automatically enrolled plans, up from 16% five years ago, and 73% of the plans use target-date funds as the default, up from 11% in 2006.

Fidelity Investments has filed with the SEC to offer a broad range of domestic and international equity and fixed-income exchange-traded funds – putting to rest longtime speculations as to when, not if, Fidelity would enter the ETF market.

Standard & Poor’s famously downgrades its rating of U.S. debt for the first time on Aug. 4. Investors pull out of equities and park their proceeds in ... U.S. Treasury bonds.

From Dodd-Frank to new taxes on professional services, lawmakers are increasingly making and suggesting changes that could dramatically impact planners and their clients. The planning community hasn't sat idle amid all this rule-making. In fact, the Financial Planning Association and its regional chapters have gotten more politically active than they've been in the past.

ProShares has created a new post, head of capital markets and named Stephen Sachs to the position.

The operators of the Hong Kong Exchanges are taking steps to enter the index business, toward creating benchmarks of the performance of stocks on mainland China and in emerging markets, such as Russia, Brazil, India and South Africa.

Since the financial crisis and Great Recession, 401(k) plans have undergone dramatic shifts. To foster diversification and greater participation, 51% of participants in Fidelity Investments' 401(k) plans are in automatically enrolled plans, up from 16% five years ago, and 73% of the plans use target-date funds as the default, up from 11% in 2006. In the past year, 64% of sponsors changed their investment lineup-up dramatically from 20% in 2008.

The State Street Investor Confidence Index rose two points in November to 97.2. In North America, the index rose 4.7 points to 95.2, and in Europe, it rose 5.4 points to 101.5. In Asia, however, the index fell 4.2 points to 94.6.

Putnam Investments announced last week that in 2011, it has expanded its wholesaling staff by 20%, bringing its total external wholesalers to 54 and nearly as many internally. Wholesalers who recently joined Putnam include:

The second iteration of the European Markets in Financial Instruments Directive is supposed to fix what was wrong with the first version, adopted in 2007.

Marketing expert Marie Swift says creating perceptions in the listener’s mind is an important marketing aspect for financial advisors. A good “elevator speech” is a succinct way to tell your story and distinguish you from others. It's also a way to qualify potential clients and to generate referrals, with an oft-overlooked bonus: confidence.

The second iteration of the European Markets in Financial Instruments Directive is supposed to fix what was wrong with the first version, adopted in 2007.