RIA Independence

Here are six key trends for HNW donors to consider during your giving season conversations.

User engagement is up on LinkedIn. How can you capitalize on it? Here are six steps to cultivate a LinkedIn network.

Is the work you do to make a living a job, a career, or a calling? Recognizing the difference will pay great dividends in many ways.

Fiduciary September just concluded. To generate further awareness, my organization, the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard, produced eight panels with 22 speakers.

Advisor Perspectives has announced its Venerated Voices™ awards for commentaries published in Q3 2023.

Last week, Bob attended the Insider’s Forum in San Antonio last week - a gathering of several hundred financial planners that focused on the latest research in practice management and other topics for the advisory profession.

When you see articles and posts about the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, ignore them.

In investing, you can have a safe present or future value, but not both!

I always talk about how powerful social media is. Let me tell a story that proves it.

Many Americans believe that Gen Z is financially illiterate and uninformed. But the story is not that simple.

SECURE 2.0 contained a provision that gave favorable treatment to partial annuitization. The reason you haven’t heard about this is because those transactions cannot increase commissionable income.

As with so many other financial matters, the varying opinions around student loan debt forgiveness are more about emotions than dollars.

We can and are building much taller skyscrapers. But they are impractical money losers because so much floor space is taken up by elevators. A new book explains the interplay between size and scale, and what it means for our economy and investments.

Deride the tactics of car salespeople all you wish, but their primary sales tool shows just how much brokers pay their employers.

Improve your own and your firm’s productivity by sidestepping these top five hybrid work mistakes.

To widen your audience, deepen client bonds, and carve out a strong market presence, a webinar strategy is your ticket to success.

I’m finding it hard to reconcile this.

For financial advisors, an appreciation of these changes fosters more profound empathy with older clients and fine-tunes their strategies.

Your prospects often don’t tell you everything you need to know to assess the depths of their problems, because they can’t articulate the context behind their surface-level description of their issues.

Have you ever wondered why your closing ratio on seminar attendees rarely exceeds 40%?

On August 25, Massachusetts’ highest court shocked the investment world by unanimously ruling against Robinhood and for the state’s fiduciary rule. Robinhood must change its ways to remain in business.

Equity traders reeling from the market’s worst stretch since February face some pivotal events in the days ahead, and a closely watched speech by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell may not even be the biggest test of all.

Halfway through the third quarter, the economy is looking surprisingly strong. A tracker from the Atlanta branch of the Federal Reserve has real gross domestic product growth, based on the limited data we've gotten so far, tracking at 5.8%, which would be the fastest for a non-pandemic quarter in 20 years.

Readers of this publication know the costs of an investment product reduce the net return and consider cost as an important criterion for selecting investments to make up client portfolios. But how do advisors define costs, and how important is cost reduction compared to other portfolio objectives?

Financial journalism has a problem. Apart from a few writers such as Michael Lewis, it is essentially bought and paid for by the financial industry itself – especially, investment management.

European banks are rightly being criticized for failing to pass on interest-rate increases to customers. But is it any wonder they’re so unafraid of losing business? Compared to their US counterparts, European financial institutions often face less competition from alternative cash-like investments.

How good are you at motivating your staff? Are they growing and learning? Are they consistently progressing?

Signs of slowing price pressures and wage growth have generated a lot of excitement about a soft landing for the US economy, where inflation glides back toward 2% without a painful recession.

Federal Reserve officials at their policy meeting in July largely remained concerned that inflation would fail to recede and that further interest-rate increases would be needed. At the same time, cracks in that consensus were also becoming more apparent.

Here are two suggestions that can save you money or time, especially if content marketing is part of your strategy.

In a year of unpleasant surprises from China's economy, here's a development we should have foreseen: The central bank lowered interest rates. With growth disappointing and prices declining, Tuesday's easing from the People's Bank of China ought to have been a no-brainer.

Investors are the least pessimistic on stocks since February of last year, before the Federal Reserve began one of the most aggressive tightening cycles in decades, according to Bank of America Corp.’s latest global survey of fund managers.

Investors are bailing out of the biggest exchange-traded fund devoted to Treasuries at the fastest pace since markets were hammered during the early months of the pandemic.

Unpacking the details of last week’s consumer price index report, the news was good: Inflationary pressure continues to slowly subside, while an economic “soft landing” — in which the Federal Reserve is able to stabilize prices without causing a recession — is starting to look more realistic.

Some couples may have what can be termed "faux" financial intimacy, where there is no tension or conflict because they avoid talking about money.

IUL is a popular investment, thanks to aggressive marketing. Before your clients succumb to high-pressure sales tactics, here’s a cautionary tale based on another lifetime purchase decision – buying an engagement ring.

The old playbook of selling emerging-market bonds when Treasury yields spike is being upended by the positive dynamics favoring developing-nation debt.

Investors hammered Chinese assets and those of developing nations relying on its sustained growth a day after US President Joe Biden described the country’s economic woes as a “ticking time bomb.”

It could take just a 1% move in the S&P 500 — up or down — every day for a week for the rally in US stocks to come under significant pressure.

In 1949, the list of the country’s most affluent metropolitan areas was dominated by Midwestern industrial cities.

A key measure of US consumer prices rose only modestly for a second month, bolstering hopes that the Federal Reserve can tame inflation without sparking a recession.

Twenty years ago, the answer to this question was obvious. Wirehouses had better technology compared to any other firm or affiliation model.

The reaction to Fitch Ratings’ recent downgrading of US government debt was more revealing than the announcement itself. Citing concerns about America’s long-term fiscal position and the risk that Washington’s political dysfunction could make matters worse, the company marked US debt down from AAA to AA+.

Bitcoin may be closer to bursting out of a period of unusually low volatility if chart patterns and the token’s history are any guide.

Advisors are increasingly turning to OCIOs to differentiate their firms, increase profitability and scale their businesses through gained efficiencies.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. jumped to a record high after its Saturday earnings report showed an operating profit for the second quarter that exceeded Wall Street expectations.

Bulging sales of US Treasuries are about to deliver a major test of investor demand and determine whether a selloff has room to run, as the market braces for the biggest round of refunding auctions since last year.