Advisors archive
Every Advisors story, newest first. 898 stories
7 stories
- Products & portfolios
AI risk now arrives inside the ordinary investment-grade sleeve
Hyperscaler issuance is projected at a record $420 billion next year, and the extra 37 basis points on AI debt is compensation for supply crowding rather than credit risk.
- Products & portfolios
Inflation tops family-office worries; use the Citi ranking as a hedge script
Citi's survey of 350 family offices puts inflation first while public equities stay the preferred allocation, handing advisors a client-ranked agenda for the next hedge review.
- Recruiting & transitions
Altruist's AI head start makes custody choice a technology bet
Schwab's Anthropic deal brings scale and a $240 seat; Altruist's lead is measured in years, and firms switching now are already choosing sides.
- Practice management
The videos won 80,000 followers; the offer won the clients
Nate Hoskin's educational videos drew 80,000 followers and almost none of the right clients, until a switch to subscription planning fees produced 172 clients and close to $1 million in annual revenue.
- Practice management
Human in the loop means three things. Ask which one.
A vendor can claim the phrase with no expert training behind the model, and the advisor who clicks approve absorbs the risk.
- The Advisor's Note
Schwab's Q4 connector turns AI access into a custody term
The assistant arrives with eleven integration partners and one custodian. Advisors should audit the custody agreement, not the license fee.
- Recruiting & transitions
Merrill sells the map while advisors get paid in equity
The same book now trades in two markets, and only one of them seats the advisor who built it.
14 stories
- Practice management
E-delivery saves postage and hands advisors a consent ledger
The SEC's comment window on Regulation E-Delivery has closed with more than 80,000 letters filed, and the two opt-out notices are the practice's real bill.
- Recruiting & transitions
A $425 million team prices independence against the employee channel
Winstone's exit gives advisors weighing independence a benchmark: platform equity and a license to buy, set against what the employee-channel seat pays.
- Practice management
Half of plan holders still worry: sell the family meeting.
Fidelity's poll of investors 55 and older finds a completed plan buys less peace of mind than the industry assumes, turning the heir conversation into a growth strategy.
- Practice management
Schwab's Q4 connector is where Claude's advisor pitch gets tested
Anthropic's advisor assistant arrives with eleven integration partners and exactly one custodian, and the license fee is the smallest part of what a practice is being asked to buy.
- Tax & estate planning
The $15 million exemption is the wrong number for multi-state clients
State estate taxes start far below the federal exemption, and the domicile test that decides them rewards advisors who document intent while the client is still moving.
- Tax & estate planning
The IRS says the tribal tax credit does not exist
Promoters are selling credits with no basis in federal law, and the clients most likely to be shown the pitch are the ones whose tax bills are large enough to make it credible.
- Recruiting & transitions
Merit's $888 million Commonwealth hire was paid partly in equity
Equity in the buyer is the package line that decides whether a breakaway keeps compounding after the signing.
- Recruiting & transitions
The OSJ left LPL. The $825 million book stayed.
Gateway Financial Partners picks up a group that kept its LPL affiliation by changing supervisors, not platforms.
- Practice management
Merrill will sell asset managers a map of its advisors' books
The $125,000-to-$860,000 packages price the practice itself, and the advisors who generate the fees are not parties to the trade.
- Products & portfolios
The corporate-bond case is a supply call, and SoftBank is the test
Investment-grade credit can hold on healthy balance sheets, but the AI-financed high-yield supply arriving beside it is where the underwriting actually happens.
- Tax & estate planning
Young clients reordered their goals. Advisors should reorder the plan.
A U.S. Bank survey finds 63% to 74% of young wealth builders would fund retirement before a down payment, making the order of a client's first dollars an advisory decision rather than a default.
- The Advisor's Note
Prediction-market volume has outrun the products advisors can buy
The wrappers advisors can buy own crypto beta, not event contracts, while the real exposure moves off-platform.
- Practice management
The compliance manual is the next deal term
Two bipartisan bills would rewrite ensemble pay and elder-exploitation duties, and the repricing lands on the practice before either statute does.
- Succession & selling a firm
Aggregator equity turns a sale into a bet on someone else's roll-up
Equity now makes up 25% to 40% of a typical advisor exit, sometimes 75%, and the headline multiple means little if the second liquidity event never arrives.
2 stories
- Practice management
The commission fix that lands on the balance sheet
Two bipartisan measures with real vote counts would change how ensemble practices get paid and how firms handle suspected elder exploitation. The desk feels both before the statutes land.
- Products & portfolios
Prediction markets are booming. The investable proxies are not.
Clients want in on event contracts, but the tokens that stand in for the theme earn their fees somewhere else entirely.
3 stories
- Practice management
The cheapest alpha an RIA can buy is a one-page memo
Most RIAs lose hundreds of hours a year to implementation drag; the fix is a one-page brief with a named owner at the bottom.
- The Advisor's Note
The RIA bidding war has moved to the holding period
Eight ways to fund an RIA purchase, and the one term that decides whether the seller's team is still there when the buyer's clock runs out.
- Practice management
Fix the process before you buy the AI tool
An Ezra Group consultant's sequencing argument lands on the least glamorous line of the AI budget: the operations work no license covers.
10 stories
- Practice management
Referrals don't compound; the conversion desk does
Wealth Enhancement's Aisling Carroll argues durable growth is built in role clarity, conversion capacity, and integration timing rather than in the volume of introductions.
- Products & portfolios
The $51 trillion retirement headline is a rollover story
Most of the quarter's gain came from equity prices, which leaves the $4.9 trillion IRA-over-401(k) spread as the figure advisors can put to work in an income conversation.
- The Advisor's Note
Buried gold and the exit nobody priced
A Pasadena advisor's wildfire-night dig makes the case that the hard part of an exotic asset is unwinding it in the right sequence.
- Practice management
Claude's advisor plug-in closes the integration gap and opens a meter
A connector that reaches across the whole stack is worth signing only for firms that already know what the work cost before it arrived.
- Products & portfolios
The quarter's fastest equity week is a rebalancing prompt
BofA counted $63.8 billion into U.S. stocks in the fastest week in three months while $1 billion left investment-grade credit and $2.5 billion left high yield, which makes a drift check the cheapest trade on the desk.
- Tax & estate planning
Montana-plate tax savings now carry a California audit risk
A California bill awaiting Governor Newsom's signature would treat certain out-of-state shell companies as state residents, putting collector-car title structures back on the planning table.
- Tax & estate planning
Family-first estate planning runs into the industry's pay structure
A new series on African American estate planning puts discovery before documents; the obstacle is how advisors are paid.
- The Advisor's Note
MoneyGuide makes the plan page an annuity shelf
The software now models guaranteed income inside the portfolio projection, turning the retirement income conversation from education into product selection.
- Succession & selling a firm
Three exits, three prices, one book
The same client list got three prices this week: a $1.3 billion custody move at 25 basis points, a wirehouse grid paying above its own top rate, and a House-passed ESOP standard.
- Tax & estate planning
The college no-man's-land is a retirement problem in disguise
Families too rich for aid and too stretched to write the check need a funding order, not another savings pitch, and the advisor who pays tuition out of the retirement portfolio trades the client's income floor for a diploma.
4 stories
- Products & portfolios
The blended risk score averages away the binding constraint
A two-dimensional read of willingness and capacity gives an advisor a ceiling to build against; the composite score gives a number that hides it.
- Tax & estate planning
The retirement agency gap is a floor-and-reserve sale
Edelman's inaugural confidence report finds 84% of pre-retirees want an active role and 60% cannot say how their savings are invested, which argues for income floor and reserve planning ahead of any education effort.
- Practice management
MoneyGuide can now model the annuity inside the plan
The income floor now sits in the same projection as the portfolio, moving the decumulation fight from illustration to product selection.
- Practice management
Your firm's manual now decides which side gigs survive
The SEC narrowed what brokerages must monitor, kept the sales-compensation trigger, and left every firm to write the list that actually governs an advisor's outside business.