Practice management

Looking for a silver lining amid all the market gloom? How about a Roth IRA conversion that can help you and your clients "rightsize" their tax bills.

From minding procedure to the minds of digital criminals, here is a diverse collection of books to pick from. Kick back with (and learn from) one, wherever you are under the sun.

Exchanges around the world should discourage market participants from gcreating excessive low-qualityh messages that can clog trading networks, two trade groups representing automated trading firms said this week.

Socialware, the Austin, Texas-based firm that helps mutual fund, brokerage and other financial services firms track their social media communications and stay in compliance with company and industry regulations, has secured another $7 million in funding.

Middle-income Baby Boomers, those earning between $30,000 and $74,000 are vastly underserved in terms of preparing for retirement, according to a new report from the Insured Retirement Institute, “Middle-Income Boomers and Retirement: Tapping the Significant and Underserved Middle-Income Market.”

Social networking? Everyone's doing it. Particularly your next generation of fund customers. You will want to reach them, as they walk and talk through the Internet.

The Retirement Income Industry Association this week announced that Duncan Williams, a graduate instructor in the personal financial planning division at Texas Tech University, and his advisor, Michael Finke, an associate professor and coordinator at the university, will receive the first Academic Thought Leadership Award at the association's Fall Conference & Awards Gala in Boston in October.

African-American financial advisors just need to look at The Washington Group, headed by managing partner Leo Tucker, to appreciate the realities and the upside potential of their chosen careers.

A senior employee known as an aggressive workaholic, but who seems stressed, yet rarely takes vacations, declines promotions, and zealously protects his business unit from outside scrutiny while personally handling choice vendors may be up to something devious.

Thomson Reuters said it began providing high-speed information and trading services to foreign currency trading firms, from its London data centers.

With Google's announcement of its agreement to acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings, the search giant has potentially turbocharged its mobile payment plans.

Breaking through the growth barrier is a concept that's all too familiar to most advisory firms at one point or another in their development. The principals have founded the business, then scratched and clawed to get it to the point of viability. But at some point, even though the firm may have gathered a respectable amount of assets, the growth just seems to plateau. Here are eight tips to help get your firm over the hump:

Hiring staff to help streamline processes and handle the workload can lead to huge growth for financial advisors who are willing to take the plunge, says Chad Olivier, founder of The Olivier Group, a financial advisory firm in Baton Rouge, La.

Donald Johnson, 57, was sentenced for engaging in insider trading on multiple occasions based on material, non-public information he obtained in his capacity as a Nasdaq executive. Johnson also was ordered to forfeit $755,066.

Since I’m such a big proponent of using free publicity versus paid advertising as a business growth strategy, advisors often ask me if it ever makes sense to advertise. In a word, yes.

The Securities and Exchange Commission Friday launched its whistleblower program, launching a Web page to collect “original information’’ about securities laws violations.

They're an elongated equivalent of a ticker tape. Instead of four-character symbols and another four characters of pricing information, they're 140 characters of insight and links to deeper information.

Ever wonder what one second of high-frequency trading actually looks like? Here's a video that slows down the flow of market data and transactions flowing through one second of trading. See if you can follow what's going on.

Rather than offer the complete lineup of a target-date series in their 401(k) plan, sponsors are selecting only those funds that fit the age and demographics of their employees. This could result in under-funded target-date funds that could put the entire lineup in jeopardy, according to a new report, “Trends in Date-Date Portfolios on Recordkeeper Platforms,” from Financial Research Corp.

Institutional traders trying to move large blocks of stock in the face of market swings are driving venues such as Liquidnet to new volume records.