Research Magazine January 2009
Cover Story
10 Tips to Winning in Tough Times
Clients have never been more jaded, or advisors more fatigued. And no wonder. As advisor coach Matt Oechsli, who heads the Oechsli Institute in Greensboro,...
Features
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Accounts That Keep On Giving
More advisors are talking about philanthropy these days, but it's still an open secret that the clients are often the ones who have to get...
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Mastering Advisor Technology
Now is the time for all good financial advisors to come to the aid of their practices. One of the smartest, easiest ways? Go high...
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The Soaring Nineties
The 1990s began with the stock market edging to new highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, having made its first close above 2,800 on January...
News
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Theorizing Risk with Harry Markowitz
Harry Markowitz is best known for his pioneering work in Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). He evaluated the impact of things like asset risk, diversification, and...
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Retirement ETFs Debut
One of the biggest hits with investors over the past 10 years has been target-dated retirement portfolios. While mutual funds were the first to lead...
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Northern Goes Global
Northern Trust has added to its lineup of internationally focused ETFs by introducing the NETS FTSE CNBC Global 300 Index Fund ETF (MYG). The new fund...
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Debut of Retirement ETFs
One of the biggest hits with investors over the past 10 years has been target-dated retirement portfolios. While mutual funds were the first to lead...
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Tracking Rubles, Real Estate
Rydex Investments added the Russian ruble (XRU) to its lineup of CurrencyShares. The ruble is the official currency of the Russian Federation (Russia) and related...
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Why Move?
Why Move? Recruiting packages are still quite attractive. I have had advisers tell me that they really did not want to move, but if they did...
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homes and their jobs at an alarming rate
A mericans continue to lose their homes and their jobs at an alarming rate. The Bureau of Lab or Statistics reported 1,330 mass layoffs in the third quarter,...
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Polishing Your Reputation
How do you strengthen as well as preserve your practice's reputation, when your broker-dealer is having "issues"? Everybody is having issues - virtually no one and...
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Five Questions for the Top Recruiter
What's the current environment? We are having a record recruiting year and should be up 15 or 20 percent year over year for 2008 vs. 2007,...
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Industry Escaping Deepest Cuts
Overall Job Market The month of December was, of course, anything but jolly for another 524,000 workers, who lost their job - capping a year that...
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Americans continue to lose their homes and their jobs at an alarming rate
Americans continue to lose their homes and their jobs at an alarming rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 1,330 mass layoffs in the third...
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The Best ETFs of 2008
If you want to know what kind of year 2008 was, all you have to do is look at the lopsided performance of exchange-traded funds...
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Big Rollout of Leveraged, Short ETFs
The last quarter of 2008 was very busy for the ETF marketplace. Between Direxion Shares and ProShares, 22 new leveraged and short ETFs were launched....
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XShares Launches AirShares
Despite the recent drop in oil prices and pullback in alternative-energy investing, XShares Advisors has introduced the AirShares EU Carbon Allowance Fund (ASO), which competes...
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Barclays Renames Lehman Bond Indexes
The empire of what's left of Lehman Brothers continues to be dismantled, including its fixed-income indexes. Barclays Global Investors (BGI) has changed the name of underlying...
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Fixed Income Rules
Many funds, fund categories and stock- market indexes have dropped by about 40 percent through December 4, 2008, according to Lipper. The Dow Jones, for...
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SEC Requires 'Concise' Info
The Securities and Exchange Commission has voted unanimously to require fund companies "to provide investors with a concise summary -- in plain English -- of...
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MFS Investment Panel Shares 'Opportunities'
In early December, MFS Investment Management pulled together several of its top experts to share year-end thoughts on the markets and trends affecting them. Erik...
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Nuveen Says It Has 'Positive Momentum'
In 2008, Nuveen Investments wrestled with the freeze-up of the auction-rate preferred securities market and sought to restore liquidity at par to preferred shareholders and...
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Fidelity Rolling Out New RIA Platform, Rewards Card
Fidelity Investments has launched WealthCentral, a web-based wealth management platform that integrates critical operational systems for RIAs, including portfolio management, customer relationship management, financial planning,...
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What to Expect at the Wirehouses in '09
Several months before Bank of America agreed to buy Merrill Lynch, industry expert Chip Roame of Tiburon Strategic Advisors shared his prediction of such an...
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Bank of America, Merrill Seal the Deal
Wirehouse BDs BofA, Merrill Seal the Deal Bank of America and Merrill Lynch shareholders have approved BofA's purchase of Merrill. And, according to Merrill Lynch, the vast...
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Hoekstra Fills Slot Left by Weil; Exec Comp Plan Revised
UBS has confirmed that because of the U. S. federal grand jury indictment of former Global Wealth Management & Business Banking CEO Raoul Weil, it...
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Retirement Rewards Cards: Yea or Nay?
Money is scarce, times are hard, and it's time to get out...the credit card? While that may be the last thing some advisors would tell clients...
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New Tool Examines Target-Date Funds
According to the Investment Company Institute, lifecycle funds or target-date funds (TDFs) have continued to grow. The funds managed $185 billion at the end of...
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Five Questions for the Retirement Advisor
What retirement issue has hit you or your clients out of left field, and how did you resolve it? The biggest issue has been systematic withdrawals...
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How to Rebuild Retirement Income
The bear market has roiled many retirees' or soon-to-be-retirees' income projections, creating the dilemma of how to recover from those losses. Jerry Golden, president of...
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Consistent Appreciation
Research Total Return Leaders Based on compounded annual price appreciation and dividends for the 10-year period ending Nov. 13, 2008, for stocks trading at or above...
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Don't Panic!
Author Ori Brafman's book can help advisors help their clients avoid the perils of group dynamics. Seems cuckoo; but it makes perfect sense, actually, that the...
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Putting on the Ritz
For years, Ted Charles was the face -- and outward personality -- of Investors Capital Holdings. No longer. In August, longtime heir apparent Tim Murphy, 44,...
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The New Retirement Advisor
In the best of times, helping clients make the successful transition to retirement can be a complex and demanding challenge for advisors. The financial and...
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Reassessing What Works
Civilization carries a grand illusion of stability. Yet, things change around us constantly. Our personalities change with aging, societies die around us, the Earth warms...
Voices/Columnists
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Survival Strategy 2009
When the tide turns against you, as the tide has turned against everyone in this industry, you have three choices: Get swept out to sea,...
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Close the Damn Door!
Now that 2008 is in our rearview mirror, I can't help but be reminded of my worst blind date, when the lady fondly told me,...
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Big Bucks Await
Forbes columnist and investment guru Ken Fisher points out that people can become rich both in strong and weak economies -- which is good to...
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Happy New Year!
It's always a good idea to think about business strategy at the beginning of a new year. But given everything we've been through in 2008,...
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Outsource for Success
Recent market volatility has led many financial advisors to yearn for more efficient and profitable businesses. Particularly as portfolios have precipitously plummeted, many advisors whose...
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Saving Along Ethnic Lines
I was in Atlanta for a couple of days to attend Charles Schwab's INSIGHT 08 conference. Dorothy A. Brown's sojourn in the South has been...
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Memo to President Obama
First, let's clear up a misconception. The economic crisis is not about house prices, credit or the stock market. The crux of the matter is...
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