Practice management

The nation’s stock exchanges and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority are filing proposals that will trigger halts in trading, market-wide, more quickly, the Securities and Exchange Commission said.

Managers of U.S mutual funds, separately managed accounts and other asset pools are pretty concerned about whether they calculate their risk exposure and performance results correctly and report correctly to regulators and clients.

Retirement Benefits Group on Monday announced that three retirement specialists from Morgan Stanley Smith Barney’s The Fraser Group have joined the San Diego-based retirement-focused branch of LPL Financial.

Professional marketers and smart advisors always tackle the “The 3 M’s” of marketing before they do any serious outreach. The 3 M’s are the foundational elements of all good marketing. However, according to marketing expert Marie Swift, it’s a very common error for many entrepreneurs and small business people to start with the wrong “M.” The problem with that is, it rarely, if ever works.

Financial Advisers of America on Monday announced that Honolulu-based CKW Financial Group has joined its family of investment advisors, bringing more than $900 million more in assets under management to the San Diego-based broker-dealer.

Investors reaching or in retirement are more likely to stay in the stock market if they’re invested in financial products that provide guaranteed income, an online survey of 1,000 Americans shows.

The Association of Divorce Financial Planners on Friday awarded its annual Pioneering Award to Dan Caine and Wendell Smith, the founders of Family Law Software Inc., for developing tools that help advisors work with couples going through a separation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged the co-founder of institutional money manager AXA Rosenberg with securities fraud for concealing an error in the computer code that helped the company manage risk for its customers and itself.

Putnam Investments has unveiled a redesigned website that provides advisors with advanced portfolio modeling capabilities, practice-management resources and a social media component for sharing and surveying information on Twitter and Facebook.

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.

Fidelity Investments racked up defined contribution commitments in the first half of the year totaling 315,000 participants, 269 plans and $17 billion in assets under administration, the company says.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is no longer going to be a wholesaler of publicly reported data, according to an assistant chief counsel. There will now be an 'enormous focus' on data on derivatives and other products that until now has not been otherwise available.

Planning to maximize Social Security benefits is becoming a service that clients expect advisors to provide, according to a new survey from a Nebraska-based software provider.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the proposal of a new rule designed “to prohibit certain material conflicts of interest between those who package and sell asset-backed securities (ABS) and those who invest in them.”

Most major corporations have "significant security gaps that leave sensitive board-level information open to information theft and hacking," according to the governance, risk and compliance unit of Thomson Reuters.

The commercial technology arm of NYSE Euronext said it began marketing a Windows plug-in that will deliver market data in real time to the desktop computers of traders.

The movement of credit-default and other forms of complex financial swaps into electronically managed and centrally cleared markets may be increasing rather than lowering risk, Michael Bodson, chief operating officer of Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation said Tuesday at SIBOS 2011 here.

Janus Capital Group has unveiled a new online retirement income distribution tool aimed at helping financial advisors keeping their clients’ retirement income evenly flowing for more than 30 years.

The Colony Group has agreed to turn a stake equaling 40% to 70% of its earnings over to Focus Financial Partners, but it is holding on to its independence and plans for aggressive growth.

By tapping into the psychology of why many clients resist financial advice, planners can help them conquer self-defeating beliefs that may block financial success.