Wealth Management
(Washington)
While dancing around the subjects for the past couple of years, the chief financial regulators have finally announced a regulation…see the full story on our partner Magnifi’s site
(Washington)
Speculation is running rampant in the wealth management…see the full story on our partner's site
(Washington)
The last couple of months has been very tense for advisors. Not only have discussions around a renewed version of the DOL rule been swirling, but highly significant tax hikes are pending. Biden is planning a huge multi-trillion Dollar increase in spending, which means tax hikes are almost a certainly. And none of them is more worrying than the hike on long-term capital gains taxes, which Biden wants to push up to 43.4% vs 23.8% now. That is scary in itself, but here is the truly worrying part: experts think it will take effect May 27th (next Thursday). This would be simultaneous to his announcement of his full budget.
FINSUM: Evidently Biden doesn’t want to give advisors and accountants time to game plan around his changes, so he wants them to go into effect immediately upon release of the budget (and they could even be retroactive).
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(Washington)
A new fiduciary rule has been in the back of all advisors’ minds for several months now. In February…see the full story on our partner Magnifi’s site
(New York)
The model portfolio world has grown highly confusing over the last few years. The explosion in popularity of models has led to thousands on the market, making it very hard to sort one from another. Luckily, Morningstar has launched a new product to help do just that. Morningstar’s new ratings are on a one to five scale (like their mutual fund ratings) and they have increased coverage recently from 76 models to 139. They are also now covering not just SMA models, but theoretical ones. Morningstar gave only 2 out of 1,500 models its top “gold” rating, and one of the pair was Vanguard’s CORE portfolio. According to Morningstar, CORE has “an extremely appealing price tag along with top notch, highly diversified underlying index funds”.
FINSUM: This rating system will be a great resource for advisors, especially as coverage continues to increase. These scores will be useful not just for investment selection, but also for highlighting their utility and legitimacy to clients.
(Washington)
Jennifer Johnston, head of municipal Bond Research at Franklin Templeton, laid the details of what exactly the Biden Administration’s infrastructure plan…see the full story on our partner Magnifi’s site