Wealth management

Morgan Stanley's chief executive, James P. Gorman, warned Wednesday that earnings could be choppy over the next few quarters because of continued market volatility, but said he expects retail investors will eventually rush back into the market.

Rising tuition fees and the uncertain state of the economy are causing more people to put their own retirement savings ahead of their children's college education.

Northern Trust Corp. said second-quarter profit tumbled as a result of declines in fee revenue and some nonperforming loans.

The AARP Financial mutual funds will cease to exist as of Oct. 1, less than three years after they launched to much fanfare.

The first blow in the fight against failures remains automating and speeding up otherwise paper-based communications between fund managers and their broker-dealers and custodian banks.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. lost its bet that stock market volatility would diminish in the second quarter, just as a gauge of equity price swings surged to a one-year high.

IMGCAP(1)]

TD Ameritrade Holding Corp said Tuesday fiscal third-quarter profit increased 5%, to $179.4 million, or 30 cents per share, from a year earlier as trading volume increased.

The securities industry added almost 7,000 jobs in June, and revisions to previous months' figures mean there were 4,000 more positions created than had been reported at the time, according to BrokerHunter.com's latest employment trends report.

After two years of economic and market volatility, consumers surveyed by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards are more concerned about their finances.

Belvedere Capital Partners LLC, a bank-focused private-equity fund, has raised far less than expected for its most recent fund. The fund had originally targeted $500 million. It held a $44 million closing in 2008 and is no longer in the market, said two people familiar with the situation.

LaCrosse Global Fund Services announced Monday that it has agreed to buy Bank of America Merrill Lynch's global alternative fund administration business.

UBS AG has hired two more advisers from Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. The hiring, along with a handful of others recently, goes somewhat against a longer trend as UBS has been under pressure in the face of massive defections in recent months.

Bank representatives' productivity declined in May, according to the latest Bank Insurance and Securities Association monthly sales productivity benchmark.

Charitable contributions by Americans dropped in 2009 for the first time since 1987 as the financial crisis cut into giving.

Charles Schwab Corp., the largest independent brokerage by client assets, reported second-quarter profit that beat the average analyst estimate as revenue from earned interest offset a drop in trading.

Murphy Capital Advisors has expanded its assets under management by 107%, to $50 million, since mid-2007. Like many of his peers, President Matthew J. Murphy said he thinks using technology plays an important role in practice management.

Charles Schwab Corp. is suing units of three banks over the sale of mortgage-backed securities to the brokerage company's bank, alleging that the units made false statements or omitted facts about the credit quality of loans backing the investments.

IMGCAP(1)]

Closed-end funds devoted to stocks, bank loans and taxable bonds have taken a wild ride this year, but closed-end municipal bond funds have avoided the turbulence.