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Many investors are caught off guard when they sell shares and later discover they are not entitled to an expected dividend payment. The confusion often stems from a misunderstanding of how dividend ex-dates and record dates actually work in practice. To receive a dividend, an investor must hold shares on or before the ex-dividend date,…

A new financial benchmark developed by the Aspen Institute finds that approximately three-fourths of Americans do not have the wealth needed to prosper in today’s economy. The findings paint a stark picture of financial insecurity across the United States, cutting across multiple age groups and income levels. The Aspen Institute’s benchmark is designed to measure…

Crude oil prices have retreated sharply following a U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding, but American drivers are finding little relief at the gas station. National gasoline prices remain elevated, averaging $3.90 per gallon, nearly a dollar higher than prices recorded in late February. The disconnect between falling crude prices and stubbornly high retail gasoline prices has…

SpaceX remains one of the most anticipated and talked-about potential public offerings in modern financial market history. Retail investors gaining access to coveted IPO allocations through financial advisers has become an increasingly discussed topic among wealth management clients. When a sought-after private company prepares to go public, securing a full allocation of shares is considered…

BlackRock’s iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (IEMG) and Vanguard’s FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (VWO) have quietly become very different investment products. For more than a decade, investors treated these two funds as nearly interchangeable, but a long-running index classification dispute has produced a record performance gap. The divergence comes down to one country: South…