Investments

When Illinois lawmakers report to the capital in Springfield today for another attempt at fixing the nation’s worst-funded state pension system, the gathering will have a ring of familiarity.

The U.S. Treasury Department has signed intergovernmental agreements with the Cayman Islands and Costa Rica in an effort to combat offshore tax evasion as part of the implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

McGraw Hill Financial’s Standard & Poor’s unit said the U.S. government has broadened the securities covered in its fraud lawsuit against the ratings company so that the case would be unmanageable at trial.

Traditional immediate annuities are now known as income annuities, and consumers are making sure of substantial future cash flows by paying well in advance.

Long-term municipal bond volume continued to trail last year’s pace as issuers sold 31.3% less in November than they did during the same period last year.

After holdings of U.S. debt surged to a record $1.89 trillion in 2012, lenders from Citigroup to Bank of America and Wells Fargo are culling for the first time in six years and amassing dollars.

Networking, marketing and educating female clients were popular topics at the Women Advisors Forum in Newport Beach, Calif., on Nov. 14. Here are some of the things we heard from top female advisors and other professionals during the one-day event

Assets have nearly doubled for direct-investing platforms, but wirehouses still reign.

Planners may soon have one more investment option to counsel clients about.

Clients tend to focus on the best investments they didn't invest in last year. Here's how to break them of the habit.

Are these tax-efficient vehicles the best way for your clients to donate to charitable causes?

The former financial bigwig talks candidly about her time in the industry, very public job losses, new networking venture and why white guys are failing to make wealth management truly diverse.

Attracted by high returns and low costs, investors continue to pour dollars into Vanguard and other equity index funds.

A new batch of nontraded REITs look eerily like disastrous limited partnerships of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Vista Wealth Management specializes in working with executives from Silicon Valley, many of whom are young and newly wealthy.

Growing firms may need to rethink processes, tools, relationships and staffing strategies.

A top performer in the large growth category, Thornburg International Growth Fund is hard to pigeonhole.

The mass-affluent are getting more serious about long-term financial objectives, although there is still a major gap between their retirement savings and retirement goals.

After 30 years of declining rates, this past spring was a modest reminder that the tide also rises. The next time will be a disaster unless your clients act now.

Breaking out of the traditional allocation model to include a much broader range of investment categories and using relative strength principals to reallocate frequently may be one way to achieve stronger results for clients.