MEDIA REVIEWS - July 1-7, 2010

Marie Swift's feature article in this month's issue of Financial Planning magazine talks about what we hope will be the final aftershock of the market meltdown: restoring client loyalty or watching clients whose confidence was shaken walk out the door. A number of commentators imply that your relationship standards with clients are at least one notch higher now than they were pre-crash, and that may be a permanent change. Another permanent change: one of the largest investment platforms in the dually-registered world has adopted a number of fiduciary-friendly features, suggesting that regardless of the SEC's actions, the fiduciary future may be upon us already.

Martin Shenkman and Ed Slott do their usual thing: offer advanced planning tips, while Stephanie Bogan identifies the stages that each advisory firm passes through if it is to evolve beyond the lifestyle practice. And Thornburg's George Strickland says that carefully-laddered individual muni investments may provide a better hedge against inflation AND rising interest rates than TIPS. It's an interesting argument.