Not all merger agreements are not created equal, and when contemplating a merger, RIA owners should be aware of these differences and the options available. One of the best investments a firm can make may be acquiring the services of an “advisor’s advisor.
In Charles MacKay’s 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, he highlights how mass human behavior can lead to irrationality: “They go mad in herds while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
Inflation is the number-one public concern in Japan. But one section of the economy is proving to be invulnerable to rising prices: pop idols, YouTubers and cartoon characters.
Let me introduce you to an approach I call the "Book of Life" methodology, a research-based strategy that transforms how new advisors build both their knowledge and their networks.
Three powerful demographic shifts — rising wealth, forward-thinking attitudes, and longer lifespans — are reshaping retirement. The emerging financial force of the future is women, and advisors who adapt now will lead tomorrow’s client relationships.
Financial wellbeing is not simply about income or net worth. Nor is it about happiness. It’s about a person’s ability to function financially with security, agency, and sustainability. Emotional enjoyment doesn’t override that, and wealth doesn’t guarantee it.
Boeing Co. expects to generate cash on an annual basis in 2026, marking a significant turnaround in the planemaker’s finances as it prepares to boost monthly production rates and pushes ahead with certification for the much-delayed 777X jetliner.
For two decades, the playbook for Big Tech was fairly simple and extremely successful: Create disruptive innovations, deliver blinding growth rates and keep a lid on spending.
Here’s how Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin treasury company Strategy Inc. is supposed to work: The firm raises funds to buy Bitcoin; that buying drives up the price of Bitcoin; the share price of Strategy follows suit. Rinse and repeat
The decision to attend college was a no-brainer during the second half of the 20th century. It almost assured higher earnings and job security. Tuition wasn’t even very expensive. None of this is true now.
If there’s one thing Democrats and Republicans have agreed on in recent years, it’s to ignore the rapidly deteriorating finances of Social Security and keep its unsustainable benefits intact. The longer they dither, the worse the problem will get.
Yields on the bond market have incrementally adjusted to introduce a new variable: a fiscal premium. Yet, this is not a new form of risk; it represents a new form of information. Investors still believe they will get repaid; they just believe they are entitled to a higher return to facilitate it.
No matter how long you delay taking Social Security, it likely won’t cover all your living expenses. But that doesn't mean you should take it early.
History shows that the starting points of technological revolutions are not invariably followed by large stock market selloffs. The historical precedent we draw from Carlota Perez's 2002 book, "Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital," coupled with the macrohistory.net data, provides some guidance.
The Benetton family’s holding company Edizione is setting up an alternative investment firm with about €3 billion ($3.5 billion) in assets under management as it seeks to grow its private markets.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will pay $2 billion to buy Innovator Capital Management, a deal that combines the bank with an issuer of a relatively new type of exchange-traded fund that has caught the attention and ire of some on Wall Street.
While outright defaults in the private credit sector remain low, analysts are increasingly concerned about the deteriorating outlook for repayment problems. When factoring in "selective defaults"—like borrowers adding interest to the loan (PIK loans) or extending maturities—the true default rate climbs to a significantly higher 4.6%.
When new homes start selling at a discount to re-sale houses, it’s time to sit up and pay attention. Apollo Global Management’s Chief Economist Torsten Slok noted the anomaly in a recent note , the first time it’s happened in more than five decades.
In the ranks of the world’s 20 best-performing stock markets this year, every second index is European.
As investors start to take sides in the AI race, Sam Altman’s buddies are getting burned.
The Federal Reserve's balance sheet has significantly shrunk from its peak of nearly $9 trillion in 2022, shifting the reserve environment from "abundant" to "ample." While some advocate for further reduction, arguing it would increase market volatility and allow for lower rates, this move would necessitate a major operational change in how the Fed conducts monetary policy and would not dramatically lower short-term rates.
Kostas Bintas, the high-profile head of metals at Mercuria Energy Group Ltd., has renewed his bullish prediction for copper prices as he warned that a rush to ship metal to the US risks draining the rest of the world’s inventories.
The article argues that the oil market is mistaken to predict long-term prices will remain near the current $60-per-barrel level through 2030, believing oil will be more expensive due to tightening supply/demand balance.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), a crucial hub for managing global risk, experienced a nine-hour trading halt due to a data center fault on Friday, disrupting markets from S&P 500 futures to crude oil. This major outage underscores the CME's integral role in global market machinery, where its platforms handle volumes exceeding 26 million derivatives contracts daily.
Nasdaq’s International Securities Exchange proposed quadrupling the daily trading limit for options tied to BlackRock Inc.’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF as demand from investors increases.
This article argues that the pursuit of high returns by institutional investors, like insurers and pension funds, through illiquid and opaque private market investments is a repeating mistake that risks underfunding future liabilities.
The dominance of Jensen Huang and Nvidia in the AI hardware market is facing a significant challenge, signaling a shift in the industry's power dynamic. This is driven by news of Google potentially selling billions of dollars in its own Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) to Meta, following a similar major deal with Anthropic.
With corporate bond spreads widening and Oracle Corp.’s credit default swap spiking to a multi-year high, Wall Street is getting worried that a flood of debt sales from Big Tech is overwhelming buyers and could blow up credit markets.
Multi-strategy hedge funds have been around for more than three decades. Will they make it to a half century? Ray Dalio, founder of 50-year-old hedge fund Bridgewater Associates has his doubts about this thriving subsector of asset management.
Some clients don’t want to expose everything and may find it annoying to be asked deeply personal questions. I do think, with some work, everyone can come around to share more about themselves if they are approached correctly. Here are some suggestions.
You don’t need a massive budget or an in-house team to market effectively. You need a focused, sustainable approach designed for small firms like yours. Here’s what that looks like in action — and how to start seeing results without burning out.
Referrals aren’t dead; they’ve evolved. When clients know you are there for more than their investments and when every moment reinforces the value you bring to your clients, referrals become a natural outcome.
Google, once seen as lagging after the launch of ChatGPT, is now surging in the AI race with its new Gemini 3 model winning praise and driving investor confidence.
Investor certainty about a Federal Reserve interest rate cut in December has surged to approximately 80%, driven by signals from Fed officials and recent mixed economic data, especially regarding the labor market.
As investors shift away from volatile artificial intelligence stocks, the health-care sector has emerged as the clear winner this month, with the S&P 500 Health Care Index up 10%. This rotation, fueled by aggressive buying from hedge funds and mutual funds, reflects investor interest in defensive value amid concerns over an AI stock bubble.
Kalshi Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer Tarek Mansour got my attention when he claimed last week that prediction markets could rival stock exchanges in a few years. Of course, this does not mean that people will buy and sell stocks on Kalshi, but that prediction markets will be where information is aggregated and prices set, with the New York Stock Exchange and its ilk relegated to processing orders.
The release of OpenAI's ChatGPT three years ago sparked an artificial intelligence mania on Wall Street, fundamentally reshaping the stock market landscape. This AI-driven frenzy has minted new market leaders, made the S&P 500 significantly more concentrated, and served as the dominant driving force behind the current bull market in US stocks.
This article explores gold's role as a distinct, independent alternative asset class, discussing its diversification benefits, and practical ways for investors to gain exposure.
Advisors spend hours gathering information via different systems that should already be talking to each other. But by the time they make sense of it, the market has moved on. I’ve seen even well-established firms face this problem because their systems rarely communicate smoothly.
Treasury yields edged lower, with the 10-year nearing 4%, as data affirming labor-market weakness and remarks from Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran bolstered expectations for an interest-rate cut next month.
Wall Street’s macro traders are headed for their best year since 2009 as clients rushed to place bets on changing interest rate policies by central banks around the world.
Meta Platforms Inc. is in talks to spend billions on Google’s AI chips, the Information reported, adding to a monthslong share rally as the search giant has made the case it can rival Nvidia Corp. as a leader in artificial intelligence technology.
This article explores the future of stablecoins as an everyday payment instrument by drawing parallels to the free-banking era (1837–1863) in the United States, when commercial entities issued their own, often chaotic, banknotes.
The article argues that making productive use of AI requires strong critical thinking, statistical, and analytical abilities, a necessity challenged by weakening standards in math and reading in educational institutions.
From a purely economic standpoint, imposing taxes on credit unions or ending taxes on banks would have the same outcome. If Congress were serious about fairness, either option would be a logical choice.
Those who have defaulted into TDFs need to un-default and take back risk control over their lifetime savings. Safe assets include Treasury bills and short-to-intermediate TIPS, even though their returns are low. The price of safety is low, but reliable, returns.
This article walks readers through the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet to explain how it now acts as the primary provider of liquidity to financial markets. It details the Fed’s reserve management tools, including the well-known QE and QT, to show exactly how it injects or withdraws reserves from the banking system.
A third straight week of market turbulence left US equity investors searching for any edge on how to position ahead of what is normally a strong seasonal stretch for stocks.
A flood of debt sales from Big Tech risks overwhelming buyers and could weaken the credit market on both sides of the Atlantic.
Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said he’s advocating an interest-rate cut in December, though the US central bank can probably take more of a meeting-by-meeting approach starting in January once it receives a flood of economic data.
