Pershing’s February 2012 Fixed Income Market Commentary Call will be held on Wednesday, February 15, 2012.

The agenda is as follows:

• Moderator
  Kathleen Canavan, Assistant Vice President, Pershing, a BNY Mellon company
• Income Strategies in a Rate-Challenged Environment
  Marvin Loh, Director, Pershing, a BNY Mellon company
  Rob Diemar, Vice President, Pershing, a BNY Mellon company
  Chris Kowall, Assistant Vice President, Pershing, a BNY Mellon company

Questions and Answers
Submit questions for our presenters to bondcentral@pershing.com prior to the call, or follow the operator’s instructions to do so following the prepared remarks.

To Participate in the Call
Please note that registration is required. Click here to let us know if you will participate. Call five to 10 minutes prior to the starting time to make sure that you will be connected.

We encourage you to share this invitation with associates at your firm who can benefit from this call.

Tuesday, February 14 at 4 p.m. EST

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/486358408

CFP^® CE Credit

Stocks have straight-lined higher year-to-date. What’s changed in the key fundamentals driving the market?  

At this month’s webinar, investment strategist Fritz Meyer will talk about:

• Europe
• Improving global and U.S. economic data
• Revisions to S&P earnings forecasts
• Are stocks cheap? Expensive? In-between?
• What to expect in bond returns
• Federal budget deficit projections
• Could a crude oil price spike push us back into a recession?
• How MPT has performed, how it is different than buy and hold

Presenter Fritz Meyer provides institutional-quality macro analysis, serving as an investment strategist to independent advisory firms. Meyer spent 15 years as investment strategist at Invesco and is a frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, Fox Business Network. He writes a blog on Advisors4Advisors and is a sought after public speaker.

To subscribe to Fritz’s monthly slide shows and get access to his PowerPoint presentation that you can edit, brand, and use as your own for client meetings and seminars, visit: http://www.advisorproducts.com/products/presentations/fritz-meyer-slide-shows.aspx

Friday, February 10 at 4 p.m. EST

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/519180096

Retirees and those near retirement are frightened. Low interest rates, high inflation and Social Security cuts threaten to turn retirement dreams into nightmares. But are things really that scary?

At this webinar, we’ll analyze how different economic scenarios might affect retirees. You’ll see how retirees might be affected by:

• Social Security cuts
• A long period of low interest rates
• A sharp, sustained increase in inflation
• Period of good and bad stock returns

We’ll also assess how advisors can assign their own probabilities for major economic risks to retirees and quantify how they will affect retirees.

Doug Carey received undergraduate and graduate degrees in economics, then at National City Bank rose from analyst to portfolio manager in two-and-a-half years. After two years as a portfolio manager, he joined a startup and developed software for institutions and hedge funds to analyze CDOs, CMOs and other structured debt products. After it was acquired in 2005 by Fact Set, he worked for the company until 2010, when he quit and started WealthTrace, a web-based financial planning application for private wealth advisors and consumers.

Get more than 50 hours of CFP^® CE credit and more than 100 hours of IMCA^® credit on replays by registering at Advisors4Advisors.com.

MARVIN LOH – DIRECTOR, TRADING SERVICES

Today’s stronger-than-expected jobs report provided a catalyst for a market that had been consolidating stocks and bonds following a very strong January. Handily beating expectations, the U.S. Labor Department reported the creation of 243,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate fell to 8.3%. These numbers partially reverse a weakening economic psychology that developed following the dour outlook from the Federal Reserve last week, along with a spate of underwhelming economic releases. For the moment, longer-dated T-notes and bonds will see a 10-15 point increase in rates for the week, as the curve steepens versus longer duration bonds. We still do not have a resolution from Greece and its banks, as a hard default looms within the next two months. Portuguese sovereign yields are also tracking uncomfortably similar to Greece in mid-2010, which bears monitoring. Having said that, Euro banks are strengthening and many have tapped the market for the first time in several quarters. With little economic news next week, and earnings season coming to a close, we will likely take cues from sovereign debt auctions and Greek negotiations. Read the full commentary now.

http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20120205/REG/302059988&issuedate=20120207&sid=TECH

Like it or not, financial advisers are now on the front lines in the war against cybercrime.

In the past few years, there has been an extraordinary increase in the level of sophistication among cybercriminals, said Philip J. Blank, managing director of security, risk and fraud at Javelin Strategy & Research.

That, combined with the relative ease of creating sophisticated databases, is making it far easier to carry out multistage schemes that prey on financial firms and their clients, he said.

So worried is the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. about the rise in e-mail-related fraud and theft that it sent out twin alerts Jan. 27 about the problem, one to investors and one to advisers.

Finra thinks that your firm and your clients are potential targets, particularly of crooks who gain illicit access to an investor’s e-mail account, which then would allow them to send a legitimate-looking e-mail to the client’s brokerage or custodian with instructions to transfer money out of the account.

With this and other scams becoming more widespread, the experts with whom I have spoken with said that advisers should take the lead in keeping their customers out of harm’s way.

“When it comes to their financial lives, clients are going to see advisers as the quarterback of their relationship with investment firms,” said Joanna Belbey, a social-media and compliance specialist with Actiance Inc.

SECURITY POLICIES

That means that advisers must be well-versed in their firm’s security policies — or, in the case of independent advisers, establish their own security policies. All advisers should be up-to-date on the latest cyberscams, frauds and schemes.

Here are some major cybersecurity do’s and don’ts of which you and your clients should be aware, and suggestions for staying out of trouble:

• Never respond to e-mail correspondence from one of your investment providers by clicking on a link and entering a password. Legitimate requests for sensitive information won’t arrive this way.

• Never access a website that opens from such an e-mail. Open a fresh web browser session and type in the correct address from a reliable source.

• Don’t provide your Social Security number for anything, if at all possible. Ask your providers for alternatives (some have come up with them, but only if you ask). Don’t share personal details that can be used as unique identifiers on your social-media pages, especially your date of birth.

• Never give any personal information to someone who sends you a message through a social-media site. As a result of the widespread use of social media, cybercriminals now can trick people into giving up personal information because there is a perceived level of trust once you have linked, friended or are following someone, Ms. Belbey said.

Even something as innocuous as a Facebook friend or a Tweet asking for your birthday could give a criminal the information he or she needs to break into an account.

A SCRIPT TO USE

Ms. Belbey suggests incorporating this don’t-share-information policy into your client meetings, especially with older clients who might be less aware of cybercrime. She even offers a script you can follow: “Since we’re meeting to talk about your goals, we should also talk about keeping yourself secure online. Let me remind you of a few things that have happened of late and that your bank is never going to send you an e-mail requesting your password or PIN, etc.”

• Make sure that all your computer operating systems are up-to-date, security patches are applied, antivirus software is current, and that you have man-in-the-browser protection in place.

Although unfamiliar to many advisers, man-in-the-browser attacks are becoming increasingly common.

These occur when someone, usually unintentionally, downloads a seemingly legitimate application that has been compromised with a piece of malicious code. That code infects a user’s web browser and can make it capable of sharing information with a cybercrook.

Such information can take the form of your password when you next log in to your bank account, for example.

All the large commercial pro-viders of antivirus or security software can provide man-in-the-browser protection.

• Check your firewalls. Not only do commercial-grade-network firewalls that businesses should be using keep many unwanted bits of software out, they also can be set to prohibit certain types of data from exiting the network — or at the very least trigger an alert if sensitive data leaves your system or an attempt is made to extract it.

Some of these also provide host-based intrusion prevention systems, which can be updated to counter new types of threats.

• Keep your office or home wireless network as secure as possible. If it uses the obsolete wired equivalent privacy protocol for security, throw it out and buy a new model that employs at least WPA2.

• Recognize that open WiFi hot spots (those that don’t require you to enter security key to access them) provide little or no protection for the data that you send over them.

• If it has been more than a year since your firm has had a security audit by a qualified professional, start thinking about having one.

djanowski@investmentnews.com

Join us for our webcast, Managing Fixed Income Exposure with ETFs, on Tuesday, January 31, 2012 from 4:15 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. (ET).

Karen Schenone, Fixed Income Strategist for BlackRock’s Portfolio Solutions group and iShares, will discuss case study examples to demonstrate how ETFs can lead to better liquidity, simplified portfolio management and more efficient trading.

Register now for Managing Fixed Income Exposure with ETFs Webcast.

We look forward to your participation.

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/815335592

Learn why social media is today’s fastest growing marketing tool and how you can use it to build relationships and strengthen your online presence.

At this webinar, you’ll learn:

• Why social media is a wealth manager’s ideal marketing tool
• Practical techniques for packing a punch with every outreach
• How to “work the room” on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn
• How to succeed with social media in 15 minutes a day or less

A veteran marketer, CaroleAnne Hardy has been helping businesses grow successful brands for nearly three decades. As an Advisor Products marketing consultant, she helps advisors with social media strategies, creating and optimizing social media content and search-engine optimized website content

The characterization of the 2012 market as “boring” came to an abrupt halt today, as European fears reinvigorated the VIX and gave investors reason to take profits. The primary driver today has been an expected slate of downgrades of European sovereigns, which were largely promised at the start of December. Although we would consider this “old news,” the reality of seeing the downgrades in print has given the market a reason to pause, allowing the bears to resurface. In contrast, euro yields had been steadily improving, leading to a relatively strong auction of Italian and Spanish debt on Thursday. Since Rome and this crisis was not built overnight, it would be naive to believe that a solution can be found in short order. Instead we find ourselves again focused on a possible Greek default and increasing expectations that it will exit the euro. As we worry about unintended consequences, we also believe that the markets have had ample time to ruminate over these possibilities, which compresses tail risk. Look for increased headlines from Greece as talks with its creditors drag on. Earnings started this week and will move into high gear next week. An early characterization is that earnings have been disappointing, with JP Morgan’s consensus matching EPS’ results, which generally disappointed the markets. Read the full commentary now.

As always, please feel free to contact us with any questions, comments and suggestions.

JANUARY FIXED INCOME MARKET COMMENTARY CALL

Access the replay online or dial in as follows:

USA and Puerto Rico Toll-Free: (800) 294-9493
International Toll: (402) 220-3767
No passcode required to listen.

Coming off a volatile year in the markets, why might small-caps be the place to find good values today?

Join us for our webcast, Finding Value in Small-Cap Investing, on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 from 4:15 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. (ET). You will hear from three of today’s top portfolio managers about why thinking small may be the next big thing.

This webcast features the following managers discussing their thoughts on small-cap valuations, market volatility and their specific approach to small-cap investing:

• Cliff Greenberg, J.D., Portfolio Manager, Baron Funds
• Thomas W. Laming, Portfolio Manager, Scout Investments
• Mark Roach, Portfolio Manager, Dreman Value Management, LLC

Register now for Finding Value in Small-Cap Investing Webcast.

For additional information users can select the Virtual Training Center within the Fund Analytics product for access to the following:

• Live Web Sessions
• Training Videos
• Training Manuals
• Methodology Documents
• Expert Series Recordings