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Retail investors want more information about the bonds they invest in, according to a new study released today by the Charles Schwab Corporation. Specifically, they want to know what the base price of bonds are and how much they are marked up by brokers. “The fixed income markets are very different from equities,” said Peter [...]
Pacific Investment Management Co. says investors should buy Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities that slumped in response to planned changes to the government-supported companies’ refinancing rules. “If you didn’t sell them two months ago and you’re selling them today, you deserve to be fired,” Scott Simon, the mortgage head at Newport Beach, Calif.-based Pimco, [...]
Settles Finra claim that it allowed short-sales without reasonable expectation of delivery UBS AG, Switzerland’s biggest bank, will pay $12 million to resolve Financial Industry Regulatory Authority claims that a brokerage unit allowed millions of short-sale orders to be placed without reasonable grounds to believe that the securities could be delivered.The supervisory system for locating and [...]
Avoiding market beta might be one of the surest ways to dampen portfolio volatility, but investors should be mindful of tradeoffs such as missing out on major market rallies. Over the long haul, however, a heavier allocation to low-beta defensive sectors like consumer staples, health care and utilities is likely to compound for a more [...]
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to revive a bid to sue Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit for allegedly paying 700 black financial advisers less than their white counterparts. The justices today turned away an appeal by 17 current and former company financial advisers who sought to press a class action race-discrimination suit against [...]
State examinations of investment advisers this year have found an uptick in compliance violations, especially involving registration, records, unethical business practices such as signing blank documents, inadequate supervision over trades and advertising issues such as misusing the term “RIA.” Examinations by state securities regulators of 825 investment advisers from Jan. 1 through June 30 turned [...]
Bill Gross, founder of Pacific Investment Management Co., said President Barack Obama’s plan to stimulate the economy with more than $300 billion in tax cuts and spending is inadequate. “I don’t think $300 billion does it,” Gross said today in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Tom Keene. “I would like to see something bold.” Obama [...]
“Just an old-fashioned love song, comin’ down in three-part harmony.” –Three Dog Night In many ways the global economic crisis is like a marriage gone bad. As the Three Dog Night sang years ago, global economies have functioned harmoniously for many years, but suddenly the love songs have become strident and cacophonous, the policy coordination [...]
The survey of 500 advisers, conducted Aug. 23, found that 68% of the respondents said they have increased their use of alternative investments, with 22% saying that use has “increased substantially” over the past five years. That trend is likely to continue, as 67% of the respondents said their allocation to alternative investments will increase. [...]
Mr. Warmerdam, who oversees more than $3 billion in the technology space from his base in Edinburgh, Scotland, chides U.S.-based tech fund managers for focusing too much attention on the local market. “We spend a lot of time doing research in Europe and Asia, and that helps us take a completely global perspective,” he said. [...]