It was Dr. Martin Luther King who said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Weighty words indeed, but they feel apropos of the back-and-forth we see in Washington over a rule meant to protect investors from unscrupulous financial advisors. To catch you up, the Obama administration was on… Continue reading →

Quick question: What title does your financial advisor use? What’s actually on his or her business card? If the words are “financial advisor,” the feds could come calling with pointed questions. The problem is one of legal responsibility. In the final weeks of the Obama administration the government was set to raise the bar on… Continue reading →

Being a good financial advisor is a lot like being a good personal physician. You have to listen to what the patient means, whether they are saying it out loud or not. Every primary practice doctor has this experience. The patient comes in, gets weighed, blood pressure taken, and the doctor does his or her… Continue reading →

Mark Mobius, a fixture in international investing from his perch at the Franklin Templeton mutual fund company, will retire this month after three decades of leading American investors to foreign shores. Like the founder of Franklin Templeton, the late John Templeton, Mobius followed a simple but difficult-to-replicate investment strategy: Be there first. Mobius is an… Continue reading →

Hedge funds get a lot of grief over punitively high fees and low returns, with good reason. Among the most hated are so-called “gated” funds, those with rules that lock up investor money for specific periods of time. The gate is there to protect other investors, and often that includes the manager. If one large investor decides… Continue reading →

Suze Orman is one of those singular personalities in the financial business who seems to be right on the pulse of everyone she meets. She’s written books, starred in her own television show and made innumerable appearances in person. Like Oprah and Bono, she’s nearly a one-name-only celebrity. Say “Suze” and you know who I… Continue reading →

“Disruption” is a term you hear bandied about in Silicon Valley, usually associated with young CEOs in t-shirts. The idea isn’t new. The 19th-century industrialist Andrew Carnegie would recognize it as competition. Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist from the 1930s, would call it “creative destruction.” In finance world terms, my favorite version of disruption is… Continue reading →

Gasoline right at the highway exit is usually cheapest. Drive a few miles toward town and you might see a 10 cent per gallon jump. Ever wonder why? If you said “competition,” go to the head of the class. Gas stations tend to cluster around knots of highway traffic. The driver near empty on a country… Continue reading →

Jack Bogle, the founder of the massively ayuccessful (and just plain massive) Vanguard Group, recently said his former company is perhaps getting too big for its own good. And big it is. The house that Jack built took in $276.2 billion so far this year, more than its eight largest competitors combined. Much of that… Continue reading →