Margin Call These are not the brokers in question.
JP Morgan is suing brokers who left for Morgan Stanley (Investment News)
JP Morgan is suing a $2 billion brokerage team who left for Morgan Stanley. The team of Michael Pudlak, Michael Reynolds, Mead Briggs III, Jason Meyer, Lori Rabinowitz and Steven Christensen allegedly told clients if they kept their accounts at JP Morgan they could be serviced by a call center. JP Morgan alleges the brokers made "disparaging and defamatory statements about JPMorgan" and were "deliberately seeking to damage JPMorgan's reputation to JPMorgan's clients in order to convince such clients to move their accounts to defendants at Morgan Stanley." The brokers deny any wrong doing.
"Playmate of the Year" turned stock trader (Business Insider)
Kennedy Summers, Playboy's 2014 "Playmate of the Year," recently discovered she has a love for trading stocks. "I love trading. I can wake up and make sure I can make money and still pay my rent," Summers told Business Insider's Julia LaRoche. According to Summers, she has good days and bad days, seeing swings of up $600 to down $1300.
The market's not ready for a Fed rate hike (Bloomberg)
Goldman Sachs' Gary Cohn believes some investors are going to be caught off guard by a Fed rate hike. Cohn told Bloomberg, ""When it does happen, it's usually not the first-derivative event that people are caught off guard by." He continued, "They're caught off guard by the second-, third- and fourth-derivative events. It's 'Oh yeah, when interest rates go up, that happens.'" Economists believe the Fed's first rate hike could come in September 2015.
Edward Jones is reviewing client fees (Reuters)
Edward Jones is reviewing the fees it charged fund clients. The company is looking into whether or not it charged clients when their fees should have been waived. According to Reuters, "77 percent of its [Edward Jones] $6.3 billion of revenue last year from mutual fund and annuity sales." A spokesman told Reuters the company is looking into certain charitable and retirement accounts.
Preparing for an audit or regulatory exam (Financial Planning)
No one likes taking exams, but its better to be prepared when you have to take one. Brian Hamburger, founder and president of MarketCounsel, shared his preparation tips with Financial Planning. Hamburger says make sure you don't wait until the last minute to prepare. Also, read the priority letters distributed by FINRA and the SEC as they do a good job of letting you know what to expect. Finally, make sure staff members are prepared to answer open-ended questions and know which information regulators can request.