Practice management

Some lawmakers, industry insiders and consumer advocates say a legislative role is needed to ensure rules are binding and combine various state and federal policies.

The SEC's Chairman declared Friday that the Wall Street firms it is supposed to watch and prevent from disrupting increasingly high-speed digitally driven markets spend far more on technology than the Securities and Exchange Commission has at its disposal for all its functions.

Tom Breaux and Ian James join Raymond James as financial advisors and will operate independent firm Capital Financial Group.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association spells out the unintended consequences of the proposed regulation.

Why do some people excel under pressure and others don’t?

Getting to the next level is the biggest challenge for advisors. Here's a unique approach to the age-old conundrum.

One third of forty-and fifty-something women figure on withdrawing 11% to 30% each year. That’s where you come in.

The California asset manager said it agreed to pay $217 million to cover investor losses as well as a $25 million civil penalty, in a settlement with the SEC over a coding error in its risk model. The firm's chairman, Barr Rosenberg, resigned, after a probe into errors in the firm's data systems.

NYSE Euronext said that its equities trading in the U.S. and its derivatives trading worldwide were down in January, compared to a year ago. But there were bright spots, particularly compared to December.

Advisors using TD Ameritrade’s practice management program have grown their business by 19% versus those that have not have only grown 9%.

In a presentation given by Beverly Flaxington, president of advisors trusted Advisor, at the 15th annual TD Ameritrade Institutional annual conference, advisors learned how to focus their business (and their resource) to improve their effectiveness.

“Something has gone very wrong in Washington,” said Tom Giachetti of Stark & Stark Attorneys at Law. “You cannot catch criminals through more regulation. Investment advisors will be burdened with more costs and it’s not protecting the investing public. This is a knee jerk reaction to Bernie Madoff.”

Many investors are assuming that that headache of cost-basis calculations are no longer their problem, period, said Nico Willis, chief executive of NetWorth Services, Inc., a financial software company in Phoenix. What most don’t realize is that the requirement doesn’t apply to securities bought before Jan. 1.

The $10 million is part of a settlement announced Thursday with the SEC, which charged the company with "failing to reasonably supervise its registered representatives" when the Reserve Yield Plus Fund saw the value of its shares fall below $1 in the midst of the credit crisis erupting at the time.

A lot of advisors seem to confuse their value proposition--and it hurts them in the long run.

Stephen Campbell joins Citi Private Bank after serving as chief investment officer at Zefram LLC, the personal investment company of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.

Nearly 875,000 employees increased their 401k contributions in 2010, a 21% increase over 2009’s level of 721,000 employees, according to Merrill report.

According to a new study, for many women, retirement means living single and that requires more preparation, and more advisor aid.

And 27% have no personal savings, a Harris Poll shows.

International regulators worked hard, agreed in December to impose tough standards and then gave bankers eight years to meet them. But the reality is something much less concrete.