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A few days before New Year's, my daughter came upon the free iPad app for the Furby Boom and fell in love with the toy. I usually do not fall prey to her whimsical wants, but with her 6th birthday approaching, it seemed like good timing to buy the toy, which is an interactive stuffed animal that responds to human voices and commands from the app. I thought I could pop into a discount chain and pick one up on a post-Christmas sale. Then I learned that buying a Furby Boom was like playing the stock market. The roly-poly fuzz ball, which is the latest iteration of a craze that started in 1998, sells out at most stores. It trades online at a premium high above its manufacturer's suggested retail price of $59. Since November, retail prices have fluctuated from a low of $29 to more than $100. When is the best time to buy a Furby Boom? To figure that out, I assessed price data to identify the timing of the next sale. Experts have access to up-to-the-minute price and inventory

Financial adviser Khloe Karova counsels her mostly female clients on a lot more than investments: career strategy, salary negotiations, budgeting - even life goals. She has been known to make house calls to keep them on track, questioning big-ticket purchases such as cars that haven't been accounted for ahead of time. "I have women across many different generations and backgrounds," says Karova, a Chicago-based adviser with $25 million under management. "I solve problems through the lens of finances." Karova's holistic approach toward her clients, most of whom are accumulating their wealth, is just one of the ways financial advisers are offering more comprehensive services to cater to the distinct needs of women, among the fast-growing groups of investors. The emphasis on women comes at a time when women in the U.S. outlive men by an average of six years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That means women whose husbands die be

The Swiss National Bank will sell securities in companies that do not meet its ethical standards, including those of firms that commit serious human rights abuses, the central bank said on Friday. _0"> "Recently the board has decided in principle to refrain from shares of companies that produce weapons condemned by the international community, seriously abuse fundamental human rights or systematically cause grave damage to the environment," the SNB said in a statement, distributed on the sidelines of an event on Thursday evening. On Friday, the SNB, whose portfolio includes weapons producers and mining firms whose environmental record has been criticized, declined to specify which investments it would drop. A spokeswoman said the central bank was offloading shares it owns that it deems questionable and would avoid future investments in such stocks. The SNB holds just over 430 billion Swiss francs ($474.40 billion) in foreign currency investments, accrued while d

BNY Mellon Corp said on Friday its fourth-quarter profit rose slightly, meeting Wall Street expectations, but higher staff expenses weighed on results even as a buoyant stock market lifted investment management and performance fees. The bank's profit margin disappointed some analysts, sending its shares down 2.7 percent to $32.99 in mid-day trading. "This is a company, despite making operating improvements, that is struggling to deliver stronger operating profit margin," said Jim Shanahan, a stock analyst at Edward Jones. In addition, the long-term net inflows into the bank's mutual funds totaled $2 billion in the fourth quarter, its weakest showing in the past five quarters. Consistent, big inflows have been an important part of management's narrative to Wall Street. "They laid an egg, but it could be just a one-off thing," Shanahan said, referring to the flows. Excluding a one-time item, the world's largest custody bank earned $628 million,

Big investors fueled by rallying equity markets made large, fresh bets on hedge fund managers that pick stocks late last year, while shunning traditional long-only stock funds, data group eVestment said on Friday. Endowments, pension funds and other wealthy investors sent $30 billion into equity-oriented hedge funds in the second half of 2013, eclipsing the roughly $8.1 billion in outflows recorded in the first half of the year, the data show. The net $21.9 billion worth of inflows into equity-oriented hedge funds in 2013 stand in stark contrast to the $108 billion that investors pulled out of traditional long-only stock funds during the first nine months of the year, eVestment said. Investors may have wanted the upside potential that the rallying stock market was showing them, along with some protection if the market reversed - something traditional funds are less able to provide. "The return of interest in having some equity exposure in the second half of the year made the

Morgan Stanley posted stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter results, as its retail brokerage and asset management businesses won more assets from clients and benefited from rising stock markets. The bank's retail brokerage business, which manages money for wealthy clients, reached the company's pretax profit margin target, and Morgan Stanley raised that target for the coming years. The results underscored how Morgan Stanley, the second largest U.S. investment bank, has retooled itself since the financial crisis. It now earns more revenues from brokerage and asset management than traditional investment banking businesses like underwriting stock offerings and trading bonds. Its shares rose 4.5 percent to $33.46. "We've said pretty consistently we're one step at a time management team," Chief Executive James Gorman said on a conference call, to explain gradual updates to the bank's strategic plan. Three years ago, he said, Morgan Stanley's return on

Wells Fargo & Co and U.S. Bancorp said on Friday they would stop offering customers a type of small, short-term loan that has come under regulatory scrutiny. The so-called deposit advance products are similar to payday loans, in that they are both small, short-term loans and have been criticized by consumer activists for their high fees. These loans are automatically repaid out of future direct deposits into checking accounts. A typical deposit advance loan can carry fees of $1.50 to $2 for every $20 borrowed. In November, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said they would make rules for deposit advance products more stringent. The regulators said they planned to impose additional limits such as requiring a one-month cooling-off period between the time one loan is repaid and another can be extended. "We are encouraging the banks we supervise to develop new and innovative programs to meet