Inside Information

Down one day, up the next. What's really going on? [Read more »] 

I wish Bob Clark's column on the new Equity Management System by FP Transitions had contained more details on how it works, and less airy discussion of what advisors in the marketplace, generally, are or are not doing, but it gives us a heads-up, and maybe I'll get into more detail in a future newsletter. Meanwhile, a lot of advisors will recognize their firm as a "tweener" in Mark Tibergien's prescriptive column on how to move beyond this awkward stage, and the article by the FA Insight folks might spur you to create a formal marketing plan... whenever you can get around to it.

Have a great week; I just sent out two client articles on the debt ceiling debate and the ratings downgrade on U.S. Treasuries, giving a plain english description and some reasons not to panic. This will be an interesting week in the markets, and I suspect there will be others who DO panic. [Read more »] 

Why this may be the worst "own goal" in history. [Read more »] 

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Angie Herbers is about to come out with a remarkable white paper on how to create a happy and productive staff in a planning practice, and we're seeing bits and pieces of it in her Investment Advisor column--including this one, where we should not be surprised to find that employees want to control their jobs and feel like what they do is significant and important.

Bob Clark takes on FINRA, exposing a naked effort to cripple the independent (and especially fee-compensated) advisory profession in favor of the brokerage firms. And Mark Tibergien suggests that leaders of advisory firms should set the tone by cultivating an environment of happiness. [Read more »] 

How do you explain the difference between the world of a broker and of a financial planner? [Read more »] 

Hmmm. Andy Gluck seems to think that it's a foregone conclusion that FINRA will become the regulator for RIAs, and that the FPA is systematically alienating its members. Wall Street wins, the FPA loses--and so does the profession.

For happier news, turn to the latest RIA survey, which ranks advisory firms according to the number of assets they have under management, and provides a few other details (growth, assets per client) that makes you wonder: does anybody rank dentists by the number of clients they serve or how much money they take in during the year? But the good news is that the RIA world appears to be growing again; AUM is up 19.8% year over year, which is certainly faster than the brokerage world is growing.

I also thought the Jim Picerno article on active vs. passive represented a fresh look at the subject, though there seem to be a few holes in the active argument that might not have been considered fully. And Joel Bruckenstein's profile of MacroRisk Analytics identifies a type of software program that many financial planners will be using in the fairly near future. [Read more »]