Marie Swift has been busy interviewing the following thought leaders. Their podcasts and commentary are available here on her “Best Practices” blog.
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Ideas and tips from Marie Swift, a nationally-recognized consultant who's worked with some of the top financial advisory firms nationwide for nearly twenty years. This blog spotlights financial services firms and allied institutions that Swift deems as adopting "Best Practices" in the industry. Swift also shares some of her own tools and ideas aimed at helping independent financial advisors.

Robert J. Lindner, CEO of Lindner Capital Advisors (a TAMP that provides third-party asset management platform services to independent advisors and IBD registered reps), and I had a very interesting discussion in July 2010.
The Missing Piece of the Portfolio Puzzle – November 2009 Managed futures have only recently been made accessible to individual investors. While viewed as a bit risky, when added to well-diversified portfolios of stocks and bonds and properly managed, these investments may help protect against market declines. Read Robert Lindner’s full article in Physician's Money Digest.
Subtraction Through Addition: Adding Risk to a Client's Portfolio Can Reduce Overall Risk – March 2010
Anyone who has studied basic portfolio construction understands that it’s possible to reduce the overall risk in a portfolio by adding an asset class that has low or negative correlation to the rest of that portfolio’s asset class constituents. At least, that’s what they taught us in Investing 101. That’s all changed now. What people are really interested in still is how the strategy worked in 2008… Read Robert Lindner’s full article in Investment Advisor magazine.
Putting It in Neutral : How You Can Improve a Client’s Portfolio by Using a Market Neutral Strategy – April 2010
With every bear market the discussion as to whether "buy and hold" works invariably resurfaces. It will be analyzed in journals, opined over in the mainstream media, and spun into the sales pitch du jour for active management. Then we enter the next bull run and investors simply don’t pay attention anymore. Or perhaps they assume that end-date bias is the culprit, so why don’t we just pick a different end date and be done with it? Well, that only works if you aren’t within a few years of retiring or your stomach is made of iron… Read Robert Lindner’s full article in Investment Advisor magazine.
Bob and his team will be at the Innovative Alternative Strategies Conference put on by Financial Advisor magazine, Private Wealth magazine and the folks at Charter Media July 26-28, 2010 in Chicago. Stop by the Lindner Capital Advisors booth and say hi. And don't miss Bob's panel presentation Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 2:00 pm. I'll be there and look forward to seeing you if you can make it!
Get additional updates by following @Lindner_Capital on Twitter.
Only recently have managed futures become accessible to individual investors. These assets – investments whose value varies with changes in market indexes, interest rates, currency exchange rates and commodity prices – have long been used by foundations and other institutional investors to diversify traditional portfolios of stocks and bonds.