The housing market is a big worry for Democrats as we move closer to US elections in November. It’s one of the primary reasons measures of consumer confidence remain depressed as a combination of high prices and high mortgage rates keep homes out of reach for many.
The breeze of this earnings season has been near perfect. First-quarter earnings, now published by 80% plus of the S&P 500’s members, put the index’s profits on course for their strongest growth since the second quarter of 2022, when higher inflation and higher rates began to bite.
Outside Business Activities (OBAs) are more than just side hustles for financial advisors – they’re ethical minefields that have drawn increasing scrutiny from regulatory bodies like FINRA. Since intensifying its focus in 2018, FINRA has highlighted the importance of transparency and adherence to compliance in these endeavors in its most recent report.
Even though taste tests had confirmed that participants preferred the taste of New Coke, when presented with the reality of no longer having traditional Coke available anymore, consumers turned away from New Coke in droves.
A few years ago, I was speaking to financial advisors about saving, spending, financial well-being, and life well-being.
When each of my children was born, I had their application for a 529 college fund filled out, mailed, and funded with the first $100 before they were released from the hospital.
The Franklin Templeton Dynamic Municipal Bond ETF (FLMI) represents the best ideas of the issuer's municipal bonds research team.
Two years after Wall Street’s love affair with fast-twitch stock options began, Bloomberg’s latest Markets Live Pulse survey suggests the unprecedented boom still has room to run — even as almost half of respondents fear an eventual blowup.
For the first time in nearly a generation, fixed income is living up to its name.
An April rout in emerging-market bonds and currencies has some former bulls turning negative on the outlook for the asset class.
When it comes to the current debate over housing affordability, I feel like my position has been clear and consistent: Twelve years ago, I wrote a book called The Rent Is Too Damn High. At the same time, I also have to admit that most Americans do not share my preferred solutions.
Gross was famous for squeezing out extra yield using corporate bonds, mortgages, derivatives and other instruments.
You’re coming to the end of your first meeting with a potential client. You’ve done a great job building rapport. They have clear issues you can help them solve. All is going well… until you explain your “next steps.”
Apple Inc. shares jumped the most in almost a year-and-a-half after the company posted stronger-than-expected sales last quarter and predicted a return to growth in the current period, sparking optimism that a slowdown is easing.
Treasuries surged and traders ramped up bets on how soon the Federal Reserve will begin to cut interest rates this year after a US labor-market report trailed estimates.
Wall Street analysts see a double-digit upside potential for the S&P 500’s biggest losers this year: real estate stocks.
As the Federal Reserve acknowledges a setback in its inflation fight, one question looms large: Why hasn’t the economy slowed the way policymakers expected?
Here’s a conversation starter ahead of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s annual meeting on Saturday: Warren Buffett should buy Boeing Co.
In an op-ed for the Washington Post on November 5, 2010, Ben Bernanke did a victory lap, praising the Fed’s efforts in stemming the financial crisis. In the article, he discusses how QE and other Fed policies eased financial conditions, bolstering investor confidence.
Advisors can already pick from dozens of tech products that use generative AI to automate aspects of their work. How long will it be until we see an end-to-end generative AI platform that does everything a human advisor can do, just as well as they can - if not better?
TIPS offer inflation protection, but at the cost of higher volatility and lower returns in bad times (when inflation is low). TIPS behave somewhere between corporate bonds and nominal Treasuries.
The prospect of higher-for-longer interest rates is weighing on crypto, underlined by deepening Bitcoin losses after the token’s worst monthly drop since the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX empire in November 2022.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell kept hopes alive for an interest-rate cut this year while acknowledging that a burst of inflation has reduced policymakers’ confidence that price pressures are ebbing.
When Berkshire Hathaway Inc. devotees gather in Omaha on Saturday for its annual meeting, there will be a noticeable void on stage.
ByteDance Ltd.’s Hail Mary legal effort to avoid selling or shutting down TikTok relies on convincing a judge the social network will disappear entirely, squashing the free speech rights of millions of Americans.
The rise of index funds has provided millions of Americans with a cheaper and more efficient way to invest. With more than $23 trillion in assets between them, BlackRock Inc., Vanguard Group Inc. and State Street Corp. have become the top shareholders in many US-listed companies.
When one is running their own business, it can be easy to try something, and if it works, then great; if it doesn’t, then you simply move on to the next thing.
A lot of financial planning software today is built to solve math problems, but what advisors really need to do is solve human problems.
Investors are plowing into technology-tracking ETFs at a record clip as conviction builds that the market’s biggest stocks can thrive in almost any economic cycle.
What’s the value of a good story? $82 billion, to judge by Tesla Inc.’s 15% share price gain Monday.
Microsoft Corp. will invest $1.7 billion to build out cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure in Indonesia, betting on Southeast Asia’s biggest economy to spur growth.
Regulators who want to get a grip on an emerging generation of artificially intelligent killing machines may not have much time left to do so, governments were warned on Monday.
A month after the US offered $1.5 billion to restart one shuttered nuclear power plant, there’s a growing sense among officials in the industry and government that it may not be the last.
Harness contrarian perspectives in a discerning manner – don’t be contrarian just for the sake of it.
Last year, the demand for loans from fossil-fuel companies fell 6% year-on-year and that followed a decline of 1% in 2022.
Amazon.com Inc.’s “show-me” moment will arrive on Tuesday when its earnings become the latest litmus test on appetite for heavy artificial intelligence spending.
A batch of exchange-traded funds investing directly in crypto debuted in Hong Kong on Tuesday, heralding potential competition for US Bitcoin products whose popularity stoked a record rally in the digital asset.
Momentum traders are modeled to buy equities over the next week regardless of market direction, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s trading desk.
America’s experiment with quantitative easing is almost over. This week, the Federal Reserve will likely announce plans to slow the shrinkage of its balance sheet, foreboding the end of a long period in which it sought to stimulate the economy by holding large quantities of Treasury and mortgage securities.
What aspect of the advisory profession can you be exceptional at, and who is your target audience that you can consistently deliver it to, who doesn’t yet know you exist?
It does you no good to meet with a prospect or client who doesn’t feel comfortable enough to be candid about what they want. Give them options, help them discover their goals, ask deeper questions and “prime the pump.”
It’s not just about the balances in the accounts; it’s about helping our clients have a healthy relationship with money.
The regular market for US equities runs for 390 minutes on a standard trading day. But at the rate things are going, eventually the last 10 might be the only ones that matter.
BlackRock Inc. is set to host a gathering of top corporate executives and government officials in Riyadh, marking the US firm’s first event on this scale in the Saudi capital and bolstering the kingdom’s efforts to lure foreign investment.
Message to bond underwriters: Some big customers are sizing up your ESG credentials.
The sorry state of Britain's equity markets has been well-documented. Across all UK indexes there have been just three initial public offerings so far this year after over 100 de-listings in 2023. The noise that this is only the beginning is getting louder.
The often-cited goal of having a $1 million retirement nest egg needs to be retired itself. Adjusted for inflation , it would take nearly $1.9 million to have the same purchasing power today as in 1999, when the oldest of millennials were just turning 18.
Many asset allocation strategies operate at the level of industry groups. Industry momentum -- buying past winners and selling past losers -- is present in U.S. data going back to the early 2000s.
The article to which this “Concerned American” refers was about investing in low-cost diversified index funds and U.S. Treasury instruments, such as TIPS. It wasn’t about politics, nor was I even thinking of the election as I wrote the piece.
Rising temperatures will soon render increasing parts of the world uninhabitable.
