Financial Advisor

Love and money go together and, according to many American adults, agreement about money is the most important element of love. That’s the conclusion of a Northwestern Mutual survey of 4,375 U.S. adults who said risky financial behavior is a deal-breaker in a budding romance.

Alan Greenspan, who served as Fed Chairman for almost 20 years, died last month at the age of 100. He was a talented and faithful public servant who guided U.S. monetary policy through the stock market crash of 1987, the boom years of the 1990s and the dot-com bubble. He was thoughtful and witty in his public comments. However, he seemed to regard a lack of clarity as almost a virtue. He inherited a Fed that had always been reticent to communicate, and he largely maintained that cloak of secrecy.

Baird Private Wealth has hired a pair of financial professionals that managed more than $600 million in client assets at Sterling Capital Management to join its office in Charlotte, N.C. John McAuley and Mary Weeks Fountain joined Baird as director/ financial advisor and financial consultant, respectively.

Traders see a US interest-rate hike later this month as a coin toss, with a renewed rise in oil prices and hawkish commentary from Federal Reserve officials auguring a swift move to tame inflation. Money market pricing on Monday suggests traders boosted their wagers for a July quarter-point rate increase after a spate of fresh US strikes on Iran.

For years, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has provided key financing to private markets funds that bridges the gap between when they receive investor commitments and when they actually deploy that money. Now, the bank is pitching a way for big money managers to effectively do some of that for themselves.

&Partners has added Foothills Legacy Wealth Management, a former Wells Fargo Advisors team in Albany, N.Y., that oversees $864 million in assets. Founded by Managing Director Andrew Cook and Director Gerard Mehan, Foothills Legacy Wealth Management serves clients in Upstate New York, according to a news release.

Millions of taxpayers will get to skip the line beginning this summer, thanks to a new automated penalty relief process the IRS is rolling out. The IRS said its new Automatic Exemption from Penalty (AEP) will automatically provide penalty relief for failure to file, pay or deposit employment taxes to eligible taxpayers. AEP applies to eligible original returns beginning with tax year 2025 and 2026 quarterly returns, as well as future tax periods, the IRS said.

The adoption of AI by financial professionals is outpacing the ability of regulators and users to oversee it, according to the Financial Modeling Institute, which was created by the Financial Modeling Global Leaders Council, a organization of 63 financial modeling professionals. “Financial advisors rely heavily on AI for research now, but there is not enough human oversight of the process,” Ian Schnoor, executive director of the institute, said in an interview.

“We are driving in the fog, and it is extraordinarily difficult to anticipate what will happen next.” That alarmed voice is coming straight from the top of the economics profession. That’s Anton Korinek, a University of Virginia economics professor and one of the organizers of a statement signed this week by over 200 economists—including 16 Nobel laureates and the chief economists of OpenAI and Anthropic—admitting, in effect, that the profession is flying blind on AI.

Henry Pizzutello provides wealth management and investment advisory services, integrating financial planning with disciplined portfolio construction, risk management and alternative investment strategies. With more than 30 years of institutional and private wealth management experience, he brings expertise across convertible arbitrage, relative value investing and alternative strategies.