February 2009
Cover Story
Advisors struggling to expand client assets and their business are facing the toughest challenges in history. For advisors willing to take a strategic view of the markets, the environment may provide gains that have not been seen in decades. ...
Features
For most people, the twin challenges of managing professional and personal risk are separate and distinct. Clients who rely strongly on domestic help are not most people, however. ...
There’suncertainty about who will be helped or hurt by the tax package that President Barack Obama will send to a Democratic-controlled House and Senate. ...
Hedge funds suffered through a catastrophically bad year in 2008. Can anyone possibly see a silver lining in this grim cloudbank? ...
What do the Royal Bank of Scotland, Yeshiva University, and the owner of the New York Mets have in common? They are all victims of the (alleged) $50 billion Bernard Madoff scandal. ...
The fixed income sector is often seen as the stable, income producing portion of a portfolio. Perception, however, is not always consistent with reality....
After 2008, clients want and deserve to know: “Who was managing my money while this happened? Was it you? Was it this other firm you hired? What were you doing while this was happening?”...
As advisors in multi-family office practices or family-focused wealth management firms, we have a unique opportunity to play a critical role in our clients’ lives. ...
Building Wealth
With the unparalleled challenges our economy faces and the extreme dislocations in the financial markets, no decision is more important than proper asset allocation....
With disappointing performance greeting them, liquidity restrictions taking hold in the summer, and the largest corporate scandal in history hitting them in December, hedge fund-of-funds investors have been on their heels all year long.
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While the wild market ride that produced drops in 2008 was launched by a lock-up in the credit markets, there is little doubt that weak GDP growth, rising unemployment, and sharp downward revisions in corporate earnings all helped push it to extremes....
Signals
There’s been much interest in the nomination of Mary Schapiro, the head of FINRA, to be the Obama administration’s chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission....
Fidelity fills executive suites; cost basis law is coming; and women are here to stay....
Endowing Wealth
The economic downturn may have sowed second thoughts about charitable giving, but it certainly hasn’t eliminated the philanthropic impulse. ...
Over the past year, the tumultuous economic environment has had wealth managers searching for ways to increase the value they bring to their client relationships....