To understand the wave of bank partnerships with private-credit fund managers during the past year or so, think back to the boom in mortgage lending through securitization in the early 2000s. The same forces are at work: a huge demand for finance, limited and costly bank capital and investment bankers’ ingenuity and desire to generate business.
In corporate-speak, when a company says a key target is “currently” unchanged but it plans to disclose a “review” soon, you know trouble is coming. And indeed, there’s trouble ahead for BP Plc.
Questioning leads to closing. A number of the advisors I work with are pretty good at engaging, asking questions and caring about the answers. However, they are really uncomfortable with the close. I promised you I wouldn’t give you coaching on “closing,” so I won’t.
I’ve identified long-term care as the greatest unsolved challenge in the field of goals-based retirement investing. This doesn’t make me Sherlock Holmes. Anyone who has requested a quote for LTCI knows we’ve got a problem.
While the overall market tends to respond favorably once the uncertainty of the election is behind us, it's important to recognize that there will be different winners and losers depending on the outcome.
The "ideal life" is a harmful myth that can distort perceptions of success and happiness. By recognizing different values and goals, you can foster a more inclusive – and realistic – understanding of what it means to lead a fulfilling life.
Most advisors grow by referral and word of mouth. But what happens when your clients stop talking about you? Here are three ways to start marketing.
The greatest dangers to a portfolio during an election year are either external events or the investor’s own actions. An election year makes staying the course more important than ever.
Alphabet Inc. shares have gone nowhere for months, trailing Magnificent Seven peers as investors struggle to price risks confronting the company. It’s a stretch to believe Tuesday’s results will blow away those concerns.
The titans of finance who congregated in Riyadh this week for Saudi Arabia’s annual Davos-style confab were mostly upbeat on the prospects for the US economy, but concerned about more sluggish growth in Europe.
If you’re unfamiliar with synthetic risk transfers, there’s a chance you’ll hear all about them when the next financial crisis hits. They’re the latest way for big banks to game rules designed to safeguard the system, and they’re growing fast. So far, regulators seem all but oblivious.
The US presidential election Nov. 5 is shaping up to be the mother of event risks so you’d think the safest of all havens would be holding up. But it’s not — and that’s only one of the notable anomalies springing up in financial markets. Yields on 10-year US Treasuries have risen nearly 70 basis points since the Federal Reserve's punchy half-point initial rate cut on Sept. 17.
Apple Inc.’s iPhone exports from India jumped by a third in the six months through September, underscoring its push to expand manufacturing in the country and reduce dependence on China.
When done effectively, your outsourced team of professionals can help improve efficiencies, increase productivity, and scale profitably – all while giving you the freedom to focus on what you’re most passionate about.
There is a demographic that likes to work with you and consistently hires you – you probably just don’t have it defined for you and your team. If you don’t know who you work best with, there is no way that your prospect efforts will be profitable. Rather, they will be coincidental.
Here, we'll explore why serving family offices is a natural fit for many RIAs, discuss the considerations that need to be factored in when launching an MFO practice, and offer a roadmap for successfully building one.
Digital assets are emerging as a crucial subset of alternative investments, and their integration into wealth management portfolios is inevitable.
Private equity can play an important role in an investor’s portfolio, offering strong return potential, increased diversification, and expanded investment opportunity. But a key step to the success of these investments is selecting the right manager.
Memory inflation of past events amplifies one's emotions and behaviors. As I will discuss, I believe that distress from recent price inflation is causing many investors to overly fear that a similar situation will reoccur.
Wall Street veteran Ed Yardeni says the approaching US election could augur the return of the market’s bond vigilantes as the Treasury Department readies new debt issuance plans.
Bitcoin traders are targeting the $70,000 price level last reached in June once again after cryptocurrencies briefly dipped across the board late Friday and US exchange-traded funds continued to see steady inflows.
Apple Inc., heralding a “new era” for its devices, started rolling out its first set of Apple Intelligence features and introduced a new 24-inch iMac desktop with a faster, AI-focused M4 processor.
Although Americans say they don’t like paying the current level of prices for goods and services that resulted from the worst bout of inflation in 40 years, they can take comfort from the fact that those prices, while admittedly not coming down in most cases, are actually becoming more affordable.
A true win-win-win situation doesn’t come along often. One could be brewing with a Boeing Co. decision to look at a potential sale — or perhaps more realistically a spinoff — of its space business.
Big energy companies are making the case that skyrocketing electricity demand from data centers — and the need to build more power sources to meet it — will end up being good for the climate.
Been with the same employer for 10 years or more? That doesn’t exactly make you a rarity in the US, where 30.2% of employed wage and salary workers were in that situation as of January 2024, according to data released last month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And while this percentage is down from a decade ago, it’s close to where things stood for the much of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.
At his party’s inaugural investment summit last week, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer positioned himself as a champion for artificial intelligence. Appearing alongside former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt, Starmer called AI an “opportunity,” rather than something to be scared of, and said his country “needs to run towards” it.
Even with inflation well and truly on the way down after the most aggressive interest-rate tightening in a generation, central banks are averse to declarations of victory. That the pace of price increases has been reined in without a major economic downturn is an accomplishment that warrants some trumpeting.
Advisors and their clients who seek to take advantage of the potential rewards of private equity investing should understand the performance dispersion between top- and bottom-performing managers, a factor that heightens both the risk and opportunity. Since private equity investments are designed to be long-term investments where capital can be locked up for years, getting the manager selection wrong can be a vexing obstacle to success.
When Warren Buffett calls a book on investing “by far the best book about investing ever written,” it is common sense to concede the point.
Equity investors face a bewildering sequence of tough-to-predict outcomes and confusing market signals. Patience and a steady hand look like valuable attributes in navigating through the noise.
To those who argue that value investing has gotten too hard in today’s momentum-chasing, passive-driven world, Scott McBride’s results are a bit of a conundrum.
Economists nudged up quarterly US economic growth projections through early next year on more sanguine views of consumer demand and maintained views that limited inflation will keep the Federal Reserve on a path toward lower borrowing costs.
One of the only things growing faster than progress in AI applications is speculation about AI’s effect on the economy. I don’t have all the answers, not by a long shot, but I do think we should expect great unevenness in adaptation, and that itself will alter our world.
Asset managers in Europe and the US have spent 2024 winding down hundreds of ESG funds, as the investment strategy continues to bump up against regulatory headwinds.
As Steward Health Care Systems LLC’s network of hospitals was struggling, it stopped paying some of its vendors. One of those vendors was a supplier of bereavement boxes, the tiny cases used to transport the remains of newborns who don’t survive.
Imagine if humanity decides it doesn’t have enough amusement parks. All the world’s nations announce they will be financing new ones across the planet. Bankers stand next to models of future parks and hand comically large loan checks to the developers. It’s not nearly enough to end the global amusement-park crisis, but they still win accolades and shareholder approval for doing their part.
The sharp selloff in Treasuries abated on Thursday, with US bonds rallying alongside European peers, after three straight days of declines.
Tesla Inc.’s shares surged after the carmaker reported surprisingly strong earnings and forecast as much as 30% growth in vehicle sales next year.
Municipal bonds are an important component in a well-diversified fixed income allocation. We recently caught up with Sylvia Yeh, co-head of municipal fixed income at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, to dive deeper into this unique bond category.
Last year, James Gorman told the In Good Company podcast that now that he had stepped down as CEO of Morgan Stanley, he wanted a board role that was more than an easy paycheck. "I want something that is complicated. I like solving problems,” he said.
It’s inevitable that the market dynamics that have delivered cheaper airfares, used cars and rents in the past year will eventually turn around. One high-profile reminder came from United Airlines’ earnings last week.
US sales of previously owned homes declined to an almost 14-year low in September as prospective buyers waited for a further decline in mortgage rates and more attractive asking prices.
Treasury yields climbed for the third straight day amid growing expectations that the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates at a gradual pace and as traders fretted about the potential inflationary implications of the US presidential election.
Vanguard Group Inc. sees more opportunities in the lowest rung of investment-grade bonds, even as spreads for triple-B notes reached their tightest since 1998 last week.
Determining your client’s risk tolerance is a critical first step in constructing a tailored investment portfolio.
I often hear my clients talk about the struggles with the next generation and how hard it is to work with them. Here are some of my best tips for how to lead the next generation (or potentially any generation that needs a little boost).
With polls showing Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in a close race, how do the key economic metrics favor each candidate?
In this new economy, your prospect is assessing you, the opposite of the way things should be and used to be. The advisory industry is now officially in a trust recession.
