Gold dropped from an eight-month high and wheat slid after Russia said some of its troops would return to their bases. Industrial metals including nickel held steady.

Crypto proponents have argued for years that regulators shouldn’t apply decades-old rules to the burgeoning asset class. But in a move with sweeping implications for the industry, at least one prominent company is now planning to register its offerings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Partisanship isn’t entirely absent from Fed picks. Although President Joe Biden has renominated the (Republican) chair originally selected by former President Donald Trump, the rest of his current picks would all be unlikely choices for any Republican president. Still, there’s nothing like the current fighting over court confirmations.

A practice built on a stool of products, pricing and performance is doomed to collapse. Competent planning requires a focus on the deeper issues your clients face.

Rental prices for single-family homes grew an average of 7.8% in 2021, an all-time high, according to the most recent data available from CoreLogic Inc. In December, U.S. home rents jumped 12% year over year for the month, with Miami leading the way with a 35.7% increase.

Prices paid to U.S. producers jumped in January by more than forecast, pointing to persistent inflationary pressures as companies contend with supply-chain and labor constraints.

As a financial planner, I don't get paid just to develop financial strategies for clients. I get paid to help them put sound advice into action. Advice without action accomplishes nothing.

Here are the most common compliance concerns and how your firm can avoid them.

New advisors face an uphill battle. Building your clientele from scratch and producing results for your firm – all while trying to learn the business – is tough. In fact, 80 to 90% fail in the first three years.

Millions of Americans are unprepared for retirement because of risk intolerance, creating a massive societal cost.

Cryptocurrency exchanges and other financial services companies were stars amid a Super Bowl ad blitz that featured the return of many longtime sponsors and an overall more celebratory mood than last year.

Online brokers like Robinhood Markets Inc. and crypto assets might get the headlines, but the Securities and Exchange Commission’s parallel effort to drag private-equity firms and hedge funds out of the shadows will have far more impact on far more lives.

Judging by the record number of people who’ve quit their jobs in the pandemic -– the so-called Great Resignation -– millions of Americans don’t really like their work.

For an ambitious, career-ladder climber, what sort of person makes the best mate? The human heart is not known for being coldly calculating, but pretend, for a moment, that it could be. What personality traits should be preferred?

The recent guidance provided by the U.S. Treasury Department on transaction reporting by crypto companies is shining some light on staking -- one of the least understood but hottest corners of the digital-asset world.

Traders and buyers of Asia’s favored oil grades from Russia, particularly ESPO and Sokol from the far east, are becoming increasingly wary of being caught up in possible trade restrictions should the OPEC+ producer be sanctioned, they said.

Those nearing or in retirement are worried about what higher-than-expected inflation will mean. Here are a few things to consider to temper their anxiety.

Market corrections can cause investors’ stomachs to roil, often leading to panicked selling. Investors might be able to avoid that mistake if they understood that drops of that magnitude occur fairly frequently – they are “normal.”

Are many of the recent problems in the world – from income and wealth inequality to China-U.S. hostility – the result of the structural overvaluation of the dollar and its reserve-currency status?

In my quest to bring you important information about Medicare, I’ll explain how to get into the Medicare system.

The term “value” is being grossly misapplied.

Our recently introduced membership service gives you the ability to forward a PDF of our articles to your clients. The PDF can include your logo and a note from you about the relevance of the article to your audience. Below are some recent articles advisors have been forwarding to their clients.

Mortgage rates in the U.S. jumped to the highest level since January 2020, before the pandemic rocked financial markets.

Manufacturers like Vestas Wind Systems A/S have been blown off course by a perfect storm of transport snarl-ups and surging freight and raw material costs. Instead of raking in profits on soaring demand for clean energy, the Danish firm is struggling just to break even.

Weekly balance sheet data from the Federal Reserve shows the monetary base contracting by a whopping 16.5% (annualized based on the last three months).

Warren Buffett’s best-performing stock last year? One he’s been dumping. Wells Fargo & Co. shares delivered a total return of 61% last year, outpacing every other company listed in the most recent public snapshot of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s portfolio, as of Sept. 30, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

U.S. consumer prices surged in January by more than expected, sending the annual inflation rate to a fresh four-decade high and adding more urgency to the Federal Reserve’s plans to start raising interest rates.

Cars have been a big part of the U.S. inflation picture over the past year. Since a computer chip shortage slowed production and drove up prices for new and used vehicles, fixing those supply chain problems in 2022 was supposed to normalize the market again, helping cool inflation more broadly.

Bitcoin’s drop since its November high has been so steep that the average buyer over the last couple of months is likely underwater until it once again tops $47,000.

We may not be in a bond bear market, but we are in a bearish market for bonds. A dangerous one, even.

The spreading global bond rout is spurring a Wall Street debate on whether investors will demand to be paid for lending to the American government like they used to.

Some of this year’s worst-performing emerging markets will get another chance to lure back bond investors after their first round of aggressive rate hikes failed to contain inflation.

In the past year, a large number of climate-focused funds have launched. Some invest in companies seeking to lower their carbon risks, while others steer assets to companies developing innovative solutions to climate change. And, sometimes it’s a combination of both.

With demand waning and supplies increasing, the housing market is in for a lot of pain. Low interest rates have been a boon to housing, making mortgages more affordable and allowing consumers to refinance existing loans, with many of them tapping the equity in their homes for extra cash.

You have a niche market selected, but now comes the tricky part: determining whether the niche is a viable client base. Here are 11 questions to help you assess whether you picked a good niche.

I have charged Ken Fisher with crimes against annuities. I will begin this proceeding by expressing my gratitude for his anti-annuity advertising campaign including its famous tagline, “I hate annuities and you should too!”

While I was raised to believe in the importance of helping others and to appreciate the help my own family was given, it was a personal tragedy that was the impetus for much of what I’ve done.

We have team members turning on one another because much of the new client servicing standards we agreed to set in place are not working.

I’m going to discuss some of the things my highly regarded, elite physician did that I rarely see advisors doing. There are five of them. Let’s start with the story of how I wound up in the cardiologist’s office.

I recently worked with a well-intentioned, highly competent advisor who made the mistake of obtaining a full power of attorney for a client.

ICYMI: In this roundup, we’re highlighting the five most popular pieces of content from the previous week.

Bari Tessler was practicing financial therapy before most of the rest of us had ever heard the term.

Hedge funds have long been criticized for underperforming the bull market in stocks for the past decade. But as markets get more challenging and interest rates climb, it’s their risk-management skills – not their performance record – that could underpin an upturn in the industry’s fortunes.

A new report from the U.K.’s Cambridge University Centre for the Future of Democracy offers investors a rare chance to think about the overall economy over the next decade. The authors compiled a large global dataset that suggests some not-often-heard claims, such as that the tide of populism, nationalism and inequality has turned, and is rapidly receding in favor of a more prosperous, peaceful, egalitarian and cohesive globe in the next decade.

As investors brace for an increasingly aggressive Federal Reserve, money is flooding into cash-like ETFs -- which are seen as relatively less vulnerable to interest-rate risk. Traders have been piling into exchange-traded funds mostly focused on ultra-short instruments like Treasury bills, while offloading ETFs tracking longer-dated debt -- even those that are considered short-term bonds maturing in five years or less.

The expanded child tax credit lapsed in December as the cost of President Joe Biden’s spending plans became a sticking point in Congress. Yet amid the debate over whether its success in reducing poverty is worth its large price tag, many are missing a crucial feature: It was uniquely well-designed to address the increasingly precarious economic reality that millions of Americans experience.

For a year and a half, Chinese authorities have been trying to reduce property prices, leverage, and the economy’s dependence on the real estate industry. As defaults and distress spread, from China Evergrande Group to Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd. and others, the first signs of a shift toward policy easing emerged last year.

Congress should act quickly to pass legislation that creates regulatory guardrails for the fast-growing cryptocurrency stablecoin market, according to Treasury Undersecretary for Domestic Finance Nellie Liang.

Custom-designed, printed marketing materials help customers know, like, and trust you by making your brand more recognizable and memorable, and deepen relationships with existing clients. Here’s how.