Global investing

Financial planners and advisers hope that by boosting marketing they can expand their practices this year, according to a survey released by TD Ameritrade Institutional.

America’s millionaires are bouncing back. The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more, not including their primary residence, grew 16% to 7.8 million in 2009, up from 6.7 million the year before, Spectrem Group’s “Affluent Market Insights 2010” report shows. In 2008, the millionaire population declined 27%.

Royal Bank of Canada’s wealth management division reported net income of $213 million for the first quarter ended Jan. 31, up 72% from the $91 million from a year earlier, partly due to higher fee-based client assets and some accounting adjustments.

In the face of the shrinking asset management landscape and soaring distribution costs, not to mention the home-office centralization of brokerage firms’ investment choices, fund companies need highly accomplished national accounts teams, according to a new kasina report, “Excellence in Distribution: National Accounts.”

Wealthy investors will continue to be careful with their money, Schwab found in a survey of 1,100 independent advisers with more than $252 billion in assets under management, the latest installment in its semi-annual Independent Advisor Outlook Study.

Being owned by a bank has handcuffed many mutual fund units. Just don’t tell that to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s J.P. Morgan Funds.

After adding 18 wealth managers in the Southeast in the past five months, Wilmington Trust Corp. plans to continue to expand in the region as it looks to cross-sell more products and services to its existing customers.

An average 24% increase in advisory, distribution and service fees fueled a 87% surge in Eaton Vance’s first quarter profits to $46.2 million, or 37 cents per share, compared with profit of $24.7 million, or 21 cents per share in the year-ago quarter ended Jan. 31.

Spectrem Group’s Affluent Investor Confidence Index rose three points to negative-10 in February, returning to neutral territory for the first time since November. The increase in the index, which measures the investment outlook of households with $500,000 or more in investable assets, follows a two-point advance in January and brings the index to neutral from mildly bearish for only the second time since February 2008.

F-Squared Investments has created the AlphaSector AllWeather Indexes, which aim to serve as a new tool for retirement income and pension plan sponsor funding requirements by concentrating on minimizing downside risk. F-Squared is offering separately managed accounts tracking them, and is currently exploring other product options with several providers.

Charles Schwab is attracting a slew of new assets, and daily average trades are rising. New and established clients brought the company $6 billion of net new assets in January, according to its monthly market activity report. Total client assets rose 27% from a year earlier, to $1.401 trillion, but were down 2% from December because of difficult market conditions.

Seventy-eight percent of advisers increased the number and duration of client contacts in 2009 to regain their trust after the very difficult year before, and while that has distracted many from business strategies, 68% of advisers are confident about their practices in the coming year. This is according to a survey of 1,804 advisers and 150 broker/dealers that Curian Capital conducted via Zoomerang.

UBS Wealth Management Americas reported net asset outflows of $11.2 billion in the fourth quarter as the division struggled to regain its footing in the competitive U.S. market. UBS blamed the outflows on advisers leaving the firm and taking clients with them as well as limited recruiting of experienced advisers.

The financial crisis has made a permanent impression on American consumers, who are likely to save 6% or more of their income over the next decade, translating to as much as $800 billion stashed away each year, according to a new study by Allianz Group.

Morningstar has acquired Footnoted.org, the terms of the deal undisclosed.

Fee-based financial advisers are grappling with the fallout from the crash of 2008 and see tactical asset management as the way to navigate the current market, according to a survey of 750 advisers by Jefferson National.

The Conference Board Employment Trends Index (ETI) rose in January by one percent to 93.2, the fifth consecutive month it has risen. However, it is down 0.7% from a year ago.

With consumers pessimistic about the current state of the economy and the future, U.S. consumer confidence fell 32.4% in February from a month earlier, according to the RBC Consumer Attitudes and Spending by Household Index.

It will be harder for advisers and money managers to outperform this year after a strong 2009, but there are still a few key areas of opportunity, Larry Adam, the chief investment strategist for Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management, said during a conference call.

More than half of CPA financial planners say their wealthy clients are not confident in the stock market, according to a survey by the American Institute of CPAs.