Royal Bank of Canada (RY) announced yesterday that it has agreed to acquire JPMorgan Chase & Company’s (JPM) third-party registered investment advisor (RIA) servicing business. Royal Bank of Canada (or RBC) took this step to expand its U.S. wealth management division. Following the acquisition, the RIA business of JPMorgan will become a part of RBC Advisor Services, a unit of RBC Wealth Management's U.S. division which provides custody and clearing services to third-party registered investment advisors. The wealth management division of RBC directly serves affluent and high net worth clients in Canada, the United States, Latin America, Europe and Asia with a full suite of investment, trust and other wealth management solutions. The division recruited more than 300 financial consultants so far in fiscal 2009. We expect the recent deal to enhance its competitive position in the RIA marketplace. Pending regulatory approvals and other ...

Royal Bank of Canada (RY) is taking advantage of market conditions to capitalize on its trading platform and expand its banking operations. It easily surprised on estimates in the third quarter by 25.61% as trading revenue soared 91.8%. Despite trading near 52-week highs, the company has a forward P/E of just 13.9.

Company Description

Royal Bank of Canada, or "RBC", is Canada's largest bank as measured by assets and market capitalization.

It provides personal and commercial banking, wealth management services, insurance, capital markets and investment banking services to 18 million clients around the world. The company has offices in Canada and 54 other countries.

RBC Reported Record Third Quarter Results

Not all banks are struggling. RBC reported record third quarter results on Aug 27 with net income jumping 24% to $1.561 billion from $1.262 billion in the year ago quarter. The company surprised by 21 cents as earnings

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A 4-day rally gets stopped at the border…  Home Prices fall at a -18.12% pace…  Alice Rivlin gives her 2-cents… * Kiwi bond maturities galore next month… And Now… Today’s Pfennig! Good day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! As tradition with the Pfennig would have it, here’s my introduction to July… There I was… On a July morning… Looking for love… With the strength of a new day dawning, and… The beautiful sun…

Yes, for those “old rockers” from the 70’s like me… That’s Uriah Heep, at their best!

OK… So, welcome to July! The last day of June was quite the volatile one to say the least! There we were waiting for the S&P/CaseShiller Home Price Index to print, and show that home prices were still down by quite a bit, when it did, it did, it printed at -18.12%… But! The media was all over that like a cheap suit, clamoring that

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Canadian Banking: Sober, Boring, and Successful

Ryan Cole, The Investment U Research Team

It wasn’t so long ago Canada’s banking system was considered behind the times. Almost cute, an antiquarian relic, it banked in the old ways… and it was holding Canada back.

After all, while real estate throughout the world was doubling every few years, Canadian homes were moving up relatively modestly.

While risk in the rest of the world had been eliminated through complicated instruments that everyone trusted “someone else” understood, Canada was still using the traditional loan-and-hold mortgage model…

I’m sure you see where this is going.

Canada’s banks weren’t caught up in one of the biggest global bubbles of the last few decades, and they aren’t participating in the fallout either. It’s why investors around the world are looking at Canada, and three of its banks that

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Here are the stocks added to the Zacks #5 Rank ("strong sell") List today:

Accuride Corp (AURD) Argo Group International Holdings Ltd (AGII) ATMI Inc (ATMI) BancTrust Financial Group Inc (BTFG) Benchmark Electronics Inc (BHE) Brasil Telecom SA (BTM) China Security & Surveillance Tech Inc (CSR) Cintas Corp (CTAS) Community Bancorp (CBON) CRM Holdings Ltd (CRMH) Cynosure Inc (CYNO) Dayton Superior Corp (DSUPQ) Erie Indemnity Co (ERIE) Fairpoint Communications Inc (FRP) First Security Group Inc (FSGI) Fuel Tech Inc (FTEK) The Hain Celestial Group Inc (HAIN) Hartford Financial Services (HIG) Innophos Holdings Inc (IPHS) INX Inc (INXI) JDA Software Group Inc (JDAS) LoJack Corp (LOJN) Mercer International Inc (MERC) MetroCorp Bancshares Inc (MCBI) Montpelier Re Holdings Ltd (MRH) Open Text Corp (OTEX) Pacific ...

Wherever we’re going, are we there yet? Nope! But we’re getting there. That is, America is sleepwalking its way into poverty. China is performing a kind of financial alchemy. And Australia finds itself subject to American-style problems, but benefitting from China’s Grand Economic Strategy.

But how about those powerful idealists on U.S. markets? Both the S&P 500 and the Dow were up nearly three percent. If you can believe it, they were led by financial stocks and retailers. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) finished up 9.9% after Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) put it on its “conviction buy” list. Home hardware retailer Lowes was up 8.1% after a survey of U.S. homebuilder confidence surged.

By the way, what the hell is a “conviction buy” list? Does that mean you can only recommend stocks in which the executives have been convicted of a crime? And if it means a share you can buy with

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Well, with the US$ down a half a cent, and decent gains in both platinum and palladium, you have to be pretty much brain dead not to have seen the footprints of the Gold Cartel in the gold and silver markets yesterday.

It all started the moment that Sydney closed on Monday afternoon…1:00 a.m. Monday in New York. From that point on, only Hong Kong [and the New York Bullion Banks] is a player. As I’ve said before, the New York banks [or their agents] can, and do, enter the markets whenever they want.

Gold sold off about five bucks with a smallish rally starting shortly after 12:00 noon in London. That lasted until the equity markets opened at 9:30 in New York…and then it was lights out…as gold got hit for $11 bucks. Once London closed for the day, the pressure was on again [both in Globex trading and electronic trading

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Industrial Production declines…  Stocks sell off, leading currencies down…  Indian election spurs a rally…  China stockpiles commodities… And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Well… As much as I dislike having to say so, because I told you this might happen… The currencies have given back some major ground VS the dollar since Friday morning. It’s all tied to the fact that the euphoria going around the markets the previous week regarding stocks and the U.S. economy, came to a screeching halt last week. I pleaded and begged for the currencies to break this link to stocks, but it wouldn’t / didn’t happen and voila!

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651K jobs lost in Feb…  Dec. and Jan Job losses revised up…  Talking Norway, Canada, Australia… Brazil stealthlike for 3 months… And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Well… Our Fantastico Friday was interrupted by that horrific Jobs Jamboree number that printed Friday morning… 651K jobs were lost in February, which let me remind you is a couple of days shorter than other months. So, it could have been worse! Hard to believe that could be the case, but it’s true. The unemployment

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by Edward Hugh: Barcelona br /br /Well reading the press this morning it would be fairly easy to reach the conclusion that nothing really happened yesterday in Brussels, and that a great opportunity was lost. The latter may finally be true, but the former most certainly is not. br /br /Let's look first at what was not decided on Sunday. The leaders of the 27 member countries in the European Union most certainly did not vote to back a proposal from Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany for a 180-billion-euro ($228 billion) aid package for central and eastern Europe. They did not back it because it was not even seriously on the agenda at this point. These people move slowly and we need to talk them throught one step at a time. So what was on the agenda. EU bonds for one, and a href="http://edwardhughtoo.blogspot.com/2009/02/let-east-into-eurozone-now.html"accelerated euro membership for the East for ...