What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You Most individuals aren’t even aware of the fact that they can use their IRA to invest in assets. By using your own self-directed IRA, you can invest in stocks, bonds, and even real estate.

Once Thanksgiving and Christmas are near, we realize that another year has come and gone. As we look back, we realize that there were many things that we wanted to accomplish in 2009, yet they somehow did not come to fruition. For many of us, life just gets in the way.

D undeeWealth Inc. DW-T has sold the most valuable chunk of its asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) for about $140-million, turning one of the final pages on the ABCP saga for the firm, which was forced to sell its banking business and a big stake in the company to Bank of Nova Scotia after the paper froze. DundeeWealth was profoundly changed by the ABCP mess, which began in August, 2007, when the market for the paper seized up

What would the banking universe look like under a Glass-Steagall redux? A one-page bill introduced this month by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., would essentially reinstate the Act, forcing banks to spin off their investment banking and insurance operations.

Even as it prepares to repay investors in the Reserve Primary Fund, the largest and most prominent money market fund that “broke the buck” more than a year ago, the Reserve Management Co. has taken another step toward making investors in one of its other funds whole. Reserve Management said Monday it will “as soon as practicable” return $43 million to investors in its Reserve Yield Plus Fund, the fourth distribution it has made so far to investors who suffered losses last year

N okia NOK-N is broadening its legal fight with Apple AAPL-Q , saying almost all of the company’s products violate its patents, not just the iPhone. Nokia Corp.

A s King Ferdinand of Spain’s conquistadors set out for the New World, he told them: “Get gold, humanely if you can, but at all hazards, get gold.” TD Asset Management’s Margot Naudie has been making her unitholders rich without destroying Aztec palaces. Naudie’s $226-million TD Precious Metals Fund soared 101% over the 12 months ended Nov.