Posts belonging to Category Fidelity



Brokers Transition to Smaller,Independent Firms

 

Investment advisors and brokers continue to go independent, and they are taking more assets with them when they leave their firms, according to an InvestmentNews article by Lavonne Kuykendall entitled “When going indie, advisers take more assets: Fidelity,” which cites Fidelity Investments’ 2011 Broker and Advisor Sentiment Index.

Are Brokerage Firms Really the Trusted Financial Advisers that Their Advertisements Claim that They Are?

 

Expecting licensed professionals who provide investment advice to act in their clients’ best interests “should be a basic tenet of the business,” but brokerage firms and their brokers don’t want that fiduciary yoke, says Karen Blumenthal in her InvestmentNews article, “When Your Adviser Can’t Be Trusted.” Moreover, they don’t want the public to know that […]

Wall Street Whistleblower Program Already Paying Off

 

The new whistleblower program that pays big cash rewards for tips about investment fraud has already resulted in a large number of high quality tips to the SEC, according to a news story this week on CNBC. According to the report, the SEC expects to receive 30,000 tips this year?just one year after the program […]

Proposed Changes to New York Law Would Make Wall Street More Accountable

 

Wall Street may face a wave of lawsuits under an expanded version of the Martin Act, New York’s securities anti-fraud statute, if the newly elected Governor of New York has his way, according to a Wall Street Journal Deal Journal blog entitled, “And the Next Mortal Threat to Wall Street Is’”.

Wall Street Intensifies Efforts to Thwart Financial Reform as Greed Trumps Common Sense

 

It’s crunch time for financial reform, and Wall Street banks are lobbying hard to keep a central pillar of financial reform from becoming law, and, at the same time, are planning ways of getting around whatever financial reform restrictions do become law, according to a recent New York Times article by Eric Dash and Nelson […]

Is Your Financial Adviser Acting in Your Best Interest?

 

Brokerage firms’ advertising portrays brokers as trusted members of the family, writes Tara Siegel Bernard in her New York Times article, “Trusted Adviser or Stock Pusher? Finance Bill May Not Settle It.” Anyone who has tried to hold a broker to a fiduciary standard of conduct, however, hears a very different response: “We are mere […]

It’s Official – Most Americans Despise Wall Street

 

According to a recent Bloomberg National Poll, more than 50% of Americans despise Wall Street and favor punishment of the bankers who caused the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The majority of poll participants — 56 percent — say big financial companies are more interested in enriching themselves at the expense of ordinary […]

Yes, Wall Street can be Replaced – Independent Brokerage Firms and Investment Advisers are Gaining on Big Wall Street Firms

 

Independent financial advisers are gaining on Wall Street brokers in the competition to manage more than $5 trillion in Americans’ savings, according to E. S. Browning in his recent Wall Street Journal article, “More Brokers Flee Big Firms, Taking Investors With Them.”

The Auction Rate Securities Debacle Continues – Corporate America Takes on Wall Street

 

The Wall Street Journal reports that “hundreds of businesses are fighting to recover billions of dollars tied up in frozen auction-rates securities, a year after Wall Street firms agreed to $60 billion in settlements over the collapsed market for the investments.” See “Firms Fight Banks Over Billions in Frozen Notes,” WSJ 1/2/10. While regulators stepped […]

Sales of Leveraged and Inverse ETFs Expose Wall Street Firms to Liability for Misrepresentation and Unsuitable Recommendations

 

Fidelity Investment has joined Charles Schwab and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in warning customers about the complexity and risks of Leveraged Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), reported Daisy Maxey in her article, “Fidelity the Latest to Caution on ETFs,” published in the August 4 Wall Street Journal. Fidelity’s web site now states: “Most [Leveraged ETFs] reset […]