Investors are nervous about rate hikes

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Investors are feeling nervous (Financial Planning)

The latest Global Asset Allocation Tracker found that wealth managers and their clients are nervous about any potential effects of rising interest rates, as well as about global political and economic turbulence, according to Financial Planning.

Advisers noted that clients' feelings ranged from "a little uneasy" to "very concerned." And one adviser even said his clients have "no confidence in non-US markets."

RIAs are losing their edge (InvestmentNews)

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"Thanks to the Labor Department's fiduciary rule, everyone giving retirement advice will be required to act in their clients' best interests," writes Christine Idezlis. "Put another way, RIAs are losing their competitive advantage. Simply playing the fiduciary card to win over investors may not work the way it did in the past."

Notably, one way that RIAs are attempting to address the situation is through mergers. Mega-deals involving more than $5 billion of assets spiked last year. Plus, although the pace of deal making slowed in the first quarter of 2016, sales of firms with $1 billion to $5 billion in assets increased significantly, according to data provided by consulting firm DeVoe & Co.

DAVID ROSENBERG: I don't want to alarm anyone but... (Business Insider)

"I don't want to alarm anyone but the facts are the facts, and the fact here is simply that this is precisely the sort of rundown we saw in November 1969, May 1974, December 1979, October 1989, November 2000, and May 2007," wrote Gluskin Sheff's David Rosenberg after Friday's dismal jobs report. "Each one of these periods presaged a recession just a few months later - the average being five months."

He continued:

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Private service sector job gains have throttled back big-time - from +222,000 in February to +167,000 in March to 130,000 in April to +25,000 in May (ratified by the non-manufacturing ISM as the jobs index sagged to 49.7 in May from 53 in April - tied for the second weakest reading of the past five years).

Once again, a discernible pattern here, but it is where the slowdown is taking place that is most disturbing.

More than one-third of the weakening we saw in the private services sector came in temp-agency employment where employment shrunk 21,000 in May, down now in four of the past five months and by a cumulative 64,000, which is a losing streak we have not seen since August 2009.

In fact, this type of weakness over such a stretch, again not to sound like an alarmist, occurred just prior to economic recessions in the past, without exception and with no "head fakes."

Yes, it typically is not good news when the headhunters are the ones to start chopping off heads - this is a leading indicator. So I may not want to sound alarmist, but the answer is yes … I am worried.

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Advisors can turn their website visitors into prospects (Nerd's Eye View)

"The question ... is how to take casual visitors to an advisor's website, and engage them in a manner where they will come back when they're ready. The answer: to use the digital visit as an opportunity to make a 'digital connection' by persuading the visitor to opt into joining your mailing list… which gives you the opportunity to stay connected with them, until they're actually ready to do business," argues Michael Kitces.

"In fact, notwithstanding the massive growth of social media in recent years, marketing studies find that email still drives business 40X more effectively than social media," he added.

Gundlach's DoubleLine touches $100 billion (Reuters)

Jeffrey Gundlach's DoubleLine Capital now has $100 billion in assets under management, reports Jennifer Ablan. The firm was founded in December 2009, and is one of the fastest-growing asset managers in the US.

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