A Brokerage Industry Gossip Website Tried To Sell Its Reader Data To Wall Street's Wire Houses

A Gossip Website Tried To Sell Its Readers' Data To Big Firms (Reuters) 

AdvisorHUB, a brokerage industry gossip and news website, collected data about the brokers who read the site and tried to sell that information to big wirehouse brokerage firms, reports Elizabeth Dilts.

"In presentations to Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and UBS Wealth Advisors in July, [the website's founder, Andrew Parish] offered to sell the information for as much as $120,000 a month, according to sources who attended those meetings and a review of his presentation," reports Dilts.

Parish confirmed in an interview with Reuters that he offered to sell the information, but also added that no firms agreed to buy.

Brokerage Firms Are Afraid Of Making Big Changes And Losing Their Advisors (The Wall Street Journal) 

"No one wants to disrupt that much or have the biggest change to cause advisers to flee," Scott Smith, an analyst with Cerulli Associates, told the WSJ. "You want to offed as few people as possible and make as little ruckus as possible, but manage from a top-down basis to get them to focus on what's important."

While in the past brokerage firms made major changes in the compensation pay structure, they're planning on focusing primarily on the details for 2015.

Additionally, some firms like Merrill Lynch are making changes that will encourage brokers to move the clients with less assets to its online-based brokerage, Merrill Edge.

Washington Insiders Are Predicting Tougher Enforcement Actions By The SEC (Financial Advisor Magazine) 

"Washington insiders involved with advisor issues are predicting tougher Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement actions and a rollout of President Obama's myRA savings plan that will be so successful it will become a model for the states," reports Ted Knutson.

"The SEC will continue to ramp up its enforcement cases against investment advisors, including cases involving allocation (cherry picking) and aberrational performance, as well as its broken windows initiative targeting rule violations that do not necessarily result in investors harm," the IAA President and CEO Karen Barr stated. 

Investors Should Use An ETFs' Transparency In Their Favor (InvestmentNews) 

"In short, given that holdings are revealed each day, ETF prices are able to be arbitraged relative to the fund's underlying net asset values (NAVs)," writes Rusty Vanneman.

"Because of this arbitrage mechanism, the prices will then track the NAVs closely," Vanneman adds. The difference between the two numbers is the tracking error - and the smaller the number, the better it is for ETFs.

"In turn, since tracking errors are low, and since an adviser can know the fund's underlying objective and holdings, he or she can feel confident that an ETF is a reliable, consistent building block for a portfolio," writes Vanneman.

A Financial Advisor Was Accused Of Taking Money From A Disabled Woman (The Columbus Dispatch) 

Robert C. Yeamans set up an investment account for his disabled 50-something daughter two years before he died - and his financial advisor Jason W. Cox promised to manage that account.

Instead, Cox "put more than $160,000 of that money - and possibly more - into his own pocket by preying on the daughter's vulnerability," reports Kathy Lynn Gray.

He was arrested on December 11, and Chase Bank has since closed the daughter's and Cox's accounts.