This week I had the chance to run a half-day workshop helping seasoned, successful advisors learn techniques for emerging as strong leaders, so I’ll share some of the information here in this column.

Successful advisors are persuasive. They understand persuasion is critical to converting prospects into clients and keeping them as clients.

Equity bulls looking for signs of relief after Tuesday’s stock rout may get a hand from a familiar friend: corporate America.

Bond traders are bracing for wilder market swings in the US than in Europe, as signs the world’s largest economy is faltering fuel bets on a jumbo interest-rate cut from the Federal Reserve.

The sharp selloff that wiped a record $279 billion off Nvidia Corp.’s market value on Tuesday has traders scouring charts for clues as to where the pain might end.

After a bruising few years, Asian currencies have suddenly become fashionable again. But this enthusiasm is dependent on words and deeds far away. The direction of global markets is driven overwhelmingly by the US. For now, that means interest-rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.

There are two radically different visions of our AI future, and they depend on the cost of energy.

A record number of blue-chip firms swarmed the US corporate bond market on Tuesday, taking advantage of cheaper borrowing costs as they look to issue debt ahead of the US presidential election.

Compliance officers in the RIA space feel the pressure of two major business goals. One, we need to help the firm grow. Two, we need to protect the integrity of the business itself and the financial safety of our clients.

You did everything by the book. Your prospect talked and you listened. But listening alone is not enough to build trust.

Few human activities are more central to historiography than war, and yet historians are poorly equipped to understand its evolutionary and psychological roots: Why War? attempts, with only partial success, to close this gap.

Half your coworkers might have just spent August in Europe, but there were no holiday doldrums in the booming world of ETFs.

Cliff Asness says he sounds like an “old man whinging,” but that’s not stopping him from writing 23 pages on his latest thesis: Financial markets these days aren’t what they were.

It’s the story of so many stock market manias: A transformative technology juices a few companies, a bunch of more questionable outfits follow in their wake, and Wall Street buys it all. Then time sorts out what’s real from fake.

Apple Inc.’s upcoming iPhone release has sent its stock price soaring because of promised artificial-intelligence features. Those gains appear vulnerable, at least in the short term, if history is any guide.

Since the pandemic, Wall Street strategists have repeatedly underestimated the performance of the US stock market in their annual projections, leading to a mad dash to boost their outlooks in the back end of the year.

What’s the point of Keir Starmer’s massive electoral majority if he remains hesitant to do something for young people on Brexit that’s not just compassionate and sensible, but also very popular?

Has the tide turned decisively against King Dollar? A fall of around 5% in the greenback versus major currencies in the past two months, pushing the dollar index to a 13-month low, suggests its post-pandemic surge has meaningfully faltered.

Investors pursuing widely followed 60/40 strategies should consider swapping out bonds for commodities, according to strategists at Bank of America Corp.

The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of underlying US inflation rose at a mild pace and household spending picked up in July, reinforcing policymakers’ plan to start cutting interest rates next month.

Forecasting anything, let alone something as complicated as the economy, is fraught. Stretches of decent growth and low inflation that look, in retrospect, like happy days, can be upended by unforeseen events. Covid, the descent into recession and the sharp rebound are just a few examples. Errors, unfortunately, are an unavoidable part of trying to map the future.

There’s an adage in Silicon Valley: Hardware is hard. And expensive. And time-consuming. That’s the case even when you’re a company that’s really good at it — like Nvidia Corp., whose market value has grown to $3 trillion thanks to its extraordinary prowess in the trickiest hardware challenge today: building cutting-edge chips for artificial intelligence.

Nvidia Corp., the world’s biggest chipmaker, has discussed joining a funding round for OpenAI that would value the artificial intelligence startup at more than $100 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

The late Jack Bogle — father of the first index fund — famously loathed their exchange-traded offspring, warning that it only incentivize speculative trading among “fruitcakes, nut cases and lunatic fringe.” Fast forward to 2024, and critics warn a new generation of ETFs are designed to do exactly that.

Last week’s meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole was a kind of victory lap for the Fed. It may have also marked the peak of its power.

Rules are made to be broken, so I would call this a 50 percent starting place in your discussion with the client. I certainly wouldn’t recommend only a 50 percent equity portfolio to a young client with a high willingness and need to take risk or the same to any client who had a low willingness and need to take risk.

If your home and/or its contents are destroyed or damaged by a disaster such as a fire or flood, the insurance company will need a complete list of what was lost. Do you have such a list?

The level of U.S. Treasury yields and the changing shape of the Treasury yield curve provide investors with critical feedback regarding the market’s expectations for economic growth, inflation, and monetary policy

Chair Jerome Powell cemented a shift in focus from inflation to employment last week when he said that the Federal Reserve does not seek a further cooling in the labor market. It was a welcome message for those concerned about an economic slowdown. But there are reasons to expect today’s sluggish hiring environment to persist at least into early next year, frustrating job seekers and policymakers alike.

US Treasury yields edged higher after resilient economic reports prompted traders to slightly trim their expectations for the scope of Federal Reserve easing this year.

Nvidia Corp.’s earnings report needed to be perfect for a stock that’s added nearly $2 trillion in market value in the past year. In the end, a broad beat still sparked a selloff.

Nvidia Corp.’s earnings report was impressive by virtually any metric — except its own recent history.

Nvidia Corp. failed to live up to investor hopes with its latest results on Wednesday, delivering an underwhelming forecast and news of production snags with its much-awaited Blackwell chips.

Watch the video above to get specific recommendations for how to think about a website revamp as a financial advisor, and when to redirect your attention to other initiatives.

By incorporating these practical suggestions into your meetings, you can effectively leverage the power of likability and high-quality evidence to build trust and increase your assets under management.

The Big Tech boom is causing headaches for all-powerful index providers on Wall Street, who can send billions of benchmark-tracking dollars on the move with just a stroke of the pen.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. became the first US company outside of the tech sector to surpass $1 trillion in market value.

Try a combination of things to get people energized. Often once people do engage, they find themselves enjoying it!

At the recent central-bank symposium at Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivered a widely expected message on interest rates: “The time has come for policy to adjust.” He all but confirmed that the Fed would cut rates by at least a quarter-point when its policymakers next meet in September.

The almost $3 trillion rally in Nvidia Corp. shares over the roughly two years since ChatGPT’s unveiling has virtually rewired the US stock market, giving the artificial intelligence chipmaking giant an outsized influence on a bevy of equity indexes.

With a September interest-rate cut all but certain and attention turning to the pace of future reductions, Federal Reserve officials are coalescing around a gradual approach to the last mile of their inflation fight.

NFL owners are set to vote on selling stakes in their franchises to private equity, potentially joining a shift by professional sports leagues to attract institutional investors.

California wants some insurance against pump prices. But in proposing that oil companies there hold a minimum stockpile of fuels, the state is also, and less obviously, seeking insurance against the complications of its own energy policies. In seeking to kill off gasoline demand but ensure suppliers stay engaged for years to come, the state is confronting one of the central challenges of the energy transition.

“What happened in 1971?” It is one of the most important and debated questions in US economic history, and new research suggests that the answer may be lurking a few decades earlier — in 1948, to be precise.

Global money has flooded into Indonesia’s financial markets this month, signaling the country’s assets have quickly become a preferred investment destination as the US Federal Reserve’s easing cycle nears.

It’s been the ultimate no-brainer for more than a year: Park your money in super-safe Treasury bills, earn yields of more than 5%, rinse and repeat. Or as billionaire bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach put it last October, “T-bill and chill.”

One of the last remaining bright spots for Chinese consumption is rapidly fading, as the nation’s economic malaise takes a toll on demand for even the most accessible of goods.

Whether someone’s problematic relationship is with food or money, recovery involves addressing the trauma and issues that underlie the behavior.

To understand the importance of involving both spouses in the discussion, we asked our very own Vicky Frye, Director of FinTech Innovation and Cybersecurity Strategies at WMGNA, for her comments on this topic.