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Only 10% of Americans with $5 million to $25 million in investable assets described themselves as “very wealthy” in a recent survey by the Spectrem Group.

When it comes to municipal bonds, broker-dealers face an unusual challenge that is beyond their control.

In the past 11 years, we’ve had two major bear markets and experienced the near collapse of the world financial system. Not surprisingly, many advisors lost revenue, lost clients and some even lost confidence in their ability to protect their clients’ assets during times of turmoil. Yet during this 11-year period of global upheaval, a select group of advisors prospered.

One fund focuses on dividends, the other on local bonds.

The recent bout of panic selling by investors in municipal bond funds reflects several factors, including headline risk due to predictions of widespread defaults, rising interest rates, the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, and rallying equities.

In an effort to prevent a recurrence of past abuses by broker's brokers, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board has issued a new draft rule that details what they must do to comply with pricing, fair-dealing, and transaction rules.

Iberiabank's agreement to buy Omni Bancshares would make it the Lafayette, La., bank's first deal in Louisiana in seven years and its first unassisted bank purchase since 2007.

NEW YORK-Traders feel more optimistic about the stock market than they did six months ago, said Kelli Keough, vice president of active trading at Charles Schwab, at a breakfast briefing Wednesday, to announce the launch of the firm’s new platform for active traders.

UBS has hired Louise F. Gunderson as a new managing director of investments for its midtown New York office.

It seems we have reached the absolute bottom of the barrel in terms of regulatory efficiency. If the SEC is spending weeks on trivial issues and completely missing Bernie Madoff then it is clear that something is seriously broken.

In the past year, TD Ameritrade’s mobile trading has increased by 125%.

State Street Global Advisors on Thursday launched the SPDR S&P Emerging Markets Dividend ETF and the SPDR Barclays Capital Emerging Markets Local Bond ETF.

Northern Trust announced Thursday it reached an agreement to buy the fund administration, investment operations outsourcing and custody business of the Bank of Ireland Group, Bank of Ireland Securities Services.

Acquisition is expected to expand Northern Trust’s fund administration business in Ireland and adds exchange-traded fund administration services for European marketplace

Male and female participants in MassMutual’s retirement savings plans had about the same among of their retirement assets in asset allocation options in the fourth quarter of 2010—24.3% for women and 24.0% for men. However, nearly all of the women’s allocation was to target-date funds, while the men had half their assets in target-date funds and half in risk-based options.

I’m all for the notion of having options, but if you look at just the ETF universe there are more than 1,000 on offer

Factor Advisors has launched five leverage exchange-traded funds that hold both a bull and a bear position. The initial FactorShares ETFs combine holdings in the S&P 500 Index, U.S. Treasury bonds, gold, oil and the U.S. dollar.

A MassMutual Retirement study found that women put their retirement assets in target-date options twice as often as risk-based options in the fourth quarter of 2010, while men were just as likely to use a target-date fund as they were a risk-based one.

In a new survey, 57% called the industry was “greedy.”

Advisor-owned firm HighTower has expanded its advisor force with the addition of four Merrill Lynch veterans in Portland, Maine.