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Today's News
Marketing, Public Relations, Scott Martin
The regulators are getting a lot of reports that criminals are hijacking investors' email accounts and using them to loot bank and brokerage assets. Tell your clients.
Boston Advisor Found $50 Million In Fake Refunds For Clients, Tried To Pay His Own IRS Bill With Fake Checks
Compliance, Advertising Compliance, Scott Martin
An especially ambitious advisor has been convicted on nine tax counts as well as contempt of court for filing fake IRS returns for his clients while skipping his own taxes.
Investors Who Seek Refuge In Traditionally Safe Harbors May Pay A Heavy Price
Investing, Strategies, Steve Higgins
Spooked by market volatility, many investors want to put their money into supposedly safer investments such as gold and U.S. Treasury bonds.
The Long-Term Commodities Rally Lost Ground In 2011 As Contracts Shrank By Most In 12 Years
Investing, Strategies, Steve Higgins
The number of contracts on 13 key commodities fell an average 19% last year, the biggest rush to the exits since 2000.
Advice
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IRS Private Letter Ruling Waives 60-Day IRA Rollover Rule For Surviving Spouse Claiming Duress
Tax, Robert Keebler In a recent private letter ruling, the IRS waived the 60-day IRA rollover rule for a surviving spouse who claimed financial illiteracy and duress. However, the wording of Section 408 of the Internal... |
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IRS Extends Theft-Loss Deduction Safe Harbor For Ponzi Scheme Losses
Retirement, Robert Keebler Investors conned into Ponzi-scheme losses used to be out of luck in claiming theft-loss deductions if the scheme leader died before a criminal conviction. New IRS revisions of Revenue Procedure... |
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Why Are The Eggheads At Dimensional Fund Advisors So Focused On The 401(k) Business Opportunity For Advisors?
401(k), Andrew Gluck Dimensional Fund Advisors has a track record of supporting best practices in investment management and grounding its solutions on academic research. DFA is embraced by many of the smartest advisors I... |
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Securities America Finds Another Fiduciary Partner To Handle 401(k) Administration
Retirement, Scott Martin Far from keeping a low profile after its near-demise and sale last year, Securities America is actively courting retirement plan sponsors in an effort to capture some of what could become a... |
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Compliance
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Boston Advisor Found $50 Million In Fake Refunds For Clients, Tried To Pay His Own IRS Bill With Fake Checks
Advertising Compliance, Scott Martin An especially ambitious advisor has been convicted on nine tax counts as well as contempt of court for filing fake IRS returns for his clients while skipping his own taxes. |
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Business As Usual Cost Merrill Lynch Advisor A Pro Baseball Client
Registered Reps, Scott Martin Doug Mirabelli, formerly of the Boston Red Sox, has won more than $1.2 million in damages and fees from Merrill Lynch related to the way the firm handled his account back in 2008. |
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Dead Brokerage Firm Still On The Hook For $9 Million To Former Clients
Registered Reps, Scott Martin FINRA is standing firm on its demand that failed broker-dealer CapWest pay $9 million in damages and fees, even though regulators confess that they are "not particularly hopeful." |
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Do FINRA and SEC Disclosures Drive You Nuts? Here's Your Chance To Let The SEC Know How To Fix It
Advertising Compliance, Andrew Gluck Do you think advertising disclosure rules are unnecessarily complicated? Unfair? How would you improve them? Here’s your chance to let the Securities and Exchange Commission know your ideas for... |
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Broker Fiduciary Rule Back in Analysis
Regulatory, Christopher E. Winn In the past week, there has been a lot of press about the SEC's stalled efforts to impose a fiduciary standard on brokerage firms. A January 10th letter for Chairperson Mary Shapiro revealed that the... |
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Industry
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Raymond James Rolls Out Retention Deals To Keep Morgan Keegan Advisors From Jumping
Advisor Business, Scott Martin The golden handcuffs are coming out now that Raymond James has taken Morgan Keegan off the market. The goal, they say, is to keep every single advisor working for the firm. |
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RIA Consolidation Numbers Prove Controversial, But Activity Keeps Chugging Along
Advisor Business, Scott Martin The 2011 registered investment advisor M&A statistics from Schwab are being interpreted in a lot of different ways, but it's hard to argue that activity is either booming or going over any... |
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North Dakota Brokerage Firm Redeems $1 Million In Pawned Stock
Broker-Dealers, Scott Martin A somewhat bizarre chapter in industry history has wound down after Capital Financial Holdings has bought 3 million of its own shares back from its pawnbroker affiliate. |
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Arizona's Biggest Advisor Takes His Clients From Morgan Stanley To HighTower
Advisor Business, Scott Martin James Pupillo has broken out of Morgan Stanley affiliate Greystone Consulting to RIA consolidator HighTower, taking part of a $2.5 billion clientele with him. |
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Yes, A Fiduciary Standard Will Result In Higher Costs To Consumers, But There Are Solutions To That Challenge
Advisor Business, Donald Trone In recent weeks, both the SEC and DOL succumbed to pressure to delay the release of proposed fiduciary standards. There are two prevailing arguments being made by those who are seeking the delays:... |
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Investing
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Investors Who Seek Refuge In Traditionally Safe Harbors May Pay A Heavy Price
Strategies, Steve Higgins Spooked by market volatility, many investors want to put their money into supposedly safer investments such as gold and U.S. Treasury bonds. |
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The Long-Term Commodities Rally Lost Ground In 2011 As Contracts Shrank By Most In 12 Years
Strategies, Steve Higgins The number of contracts on 13 key commodities fell an average 19% last year, the biggest rush to the exits since 2000. |
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GDP Expanded Sharply In The Fourth Quarter But Didn't Quite Meet Expectations
Strategies, Steve Higgins The U.S. gross domestic product grew at a 2.8% annual rate in the fourth quarter, the Commerce Department said Friday. |
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The Federal Reserve Extends The Time Period It Plans To Keep Interest Rates Low
Strategies, Steve Higgins The Federal Reserve said Wednesday it will keep short-term interest rates near zero through most of 2014. |
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Best And Worst Performing Target Date Funds In 2011
Strategies, Ron Surz The 2011 performance of target date funds (TDFs) serves as a progress report on protecting the vulnerable, namely those in or near retirement. |
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Managing
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Scarcity Is Silly; If You See A World Of Abundance, You Will Share In The Abundance
Personal Development, Josh Patrick We spend too much time thinking that there is not enough in the world. At least in the US, scarcity seems like a silly concept. We live in a land of abundance. |
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What Do You Want To Be In 2012? A Business Or A Practice? How To Create A Successful And Enduring Investment Advisory Business
Practice Management, Andrew Gluck You can’t build an investment advisory business unless you define your firm’s processes and embed them in CRM software shared by a team. So the first thing you need to do right now is to... |
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Forget Resolutions -- What's Your Mission?
Personal Development, Jim Rohrbach "Where there is no vision, the people perish." Proverbs 29:18 |
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Plan Your Growth Strategy For 2012: 15 Questions Investment Advisors Need To Answer
Practice Management, Andrew Gluck With just a couple of days before New Year’s, this is a reminder to set aside some time to think strategically about new year ahead: 15 questions designed to make you think about how to get... |
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Marketing
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FINRA Warns Of Wave Of E-Mail Account Scams
Public Relations, Scott Martin The regulators are getting a lot of reports that criminals are hijacking investors' email accounts and using them to loot bank and brokerage assets. Tell your clients. |
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Are You “Wowing” Clients? Most Advisors Think They Are But Are Just Fooling Themselves
Client Communications, Stephen Wershing We have been told that to attract referrals and clients, we have to provide a “wow” experience. But that’s just not enough on which to base a business development plan. |
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Is Low Trust In The Finance Industry An Asset Or A Problem For Good Advisors?
Public Relations, Scott Martin The annual industry trust metrics are out and once again the "financial" business scores lowest around the world. This means good advisors can differentiate themselves as exceptions to what... |
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If You Want More Sex, It Is Not About How Much You Ask For It; Same With Referrals
Client Communications, Stephen Wershing Attracting referrals is like attracting sex. Stick with me and I’ll explain. |
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Technology
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Use Windows On Your iPad; A Solution For Those Leading A Bi-Platform Lifestyle
Phones, Andrew Gluck If you use a PC in your office and an iPad everywhere else, here’s a way to create Micosoft Office documents on your iPad that you can also use on your PCs. |
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Security Issues Advisors Should Ask Web-Based Application Vendors About
Security, Andrew Gluck With a secure system serving advisors reportedly crashing in late December and still unable to recover client data for advisors it serves, the risk of web-based apps was recently brought into... |
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10 Free iPhone Apps We Can't Live Without
Phones, Andrew Gluck Among the favorites here is one that turns pictures you take of business cards into contacts on your iPhone and there are also fun suggestions for editing photos and watching sports scores. |
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Bowing to Critics and Market Forces, RIM’s Co-Chiefs Step Aside
Phones, Andrew Gluck Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, who made the BlackBerry a leading business tool but then presided over its precipitous decline, said they would step down on Monday as co-chairmen and co-chief... |
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Apple's iOS5 release is almost here, one new feature has me very excited.
Phones, Brian Edelman Several months ago I switched from the Blackberry to the iPhone and the results have not been great. When my blackberry received an email, phone call, sms, messenger, it would always show up in... |
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A4A News
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The 401(k) Opportunity For Advisors; Download Apollo Lupescu's Presentation Slides Here If You're An A4A Member
News, Andrew Gluck Apollo Lupescu's presentation this afternoon about the confluence of events that has created a business opportunity for private wealth advisors makes a strong case for using turnkey solutions to... |
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What You’re Missing By Not Joining Advisors4Advisors
News, Andrew Gluck Advisors4Advisors is doing something different. We’re aggregating top news from outlets all over the profession and we’re offering analysis on key stories. So you get breaking news... |
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Why Is Advisors4Advisors Donating To Bubbles The Clown's Charitable Organization?
News, Andrew Gluck About two weeks ago, I stumbled into a story about how businesses can partner with charitable organizations. Being a win-win kind of guy, I was intrigued. The Web then drew me in.... |
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What Were The Most Important News Stories Of 2011 To Financial Advisors?
News, Andrew Gluck The new Trending page on Advisors4Advisors is Internet gold. It displays a listing of the most popular articles on A4A over the past year, quarter, month, and week. Since A4A... |
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Where Can Financial Advisors Learn Advanced Tax Planning Techniques?
News, Robert Keebler When advisors face a complex tax-planning situation, they’re often quick to refer the client to outside help. A better result would be to understand the basics of these advanced strategies... |
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