Investments

Your investment goals are unique. We can help you build a portfolio that meets your needs.

Building My Wealth Managing My Wealth Preserving My Wealth

How Can I Grow My Wealth

There is no simple solution for growing wealth. Your financial goals, timeline, and risk profile will determine how you should allocate your assets among the major investment classes of stocks, bonds, and cash equivalents. For example, young parents who are starting a college education fund for their newborn have a long time horizon and typically can, in the earlier years, tolerate the fluctuations of an aggressive growth strategy that invests primarily in stocks. In contrast, retirees who want current income from their portfolios typically allocate a significant amount to low volatility bonds while still owning stocks to help provide adequate portfolio growth to maintain their purchasing power.

Investing With Taxes In Mind

The point of your investment decisions is, by definition, to produce the returns you need to meet your long-term financial goals. But unless you're also managing investments for tax efficiency, you may be paying more than your fair share of federal tax. This is especially true for the growing number of households that in 2007 could become subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

The AMT is a provision of the IRS tax code enacted in the 1960s to curb the use of tax deductions by the wealthiest citizens. Although the goal was to ensure that everyone paid at least some income tax, the AMT has never been adjusted for inflation. As a result, roughly 23 million filers with rising incomes may face higher payments in the 2007 tax year.

All In One Place

Managing your day-to-day financial needs is as crucial to achieving your personal goals as managing your long-term investments. That's why Merrill Lynch offers a broad array of cash management services to help you integrate your financial life. Now we've made it easier for you to utilize these services — and keep track of your disparate finances — through the new CMA Plus^® package, offered as part of the Cash Management Account^® (CMA^® account).

Available without a monthly fee to qualifying clients^®, CMA Plus gives you the simplicity of a single all-inclusive account — with one point of contact and with one location — for both your long-term investments and everyday finances.

Many investors do not realize that funds with divergent goals may hold large positions in the same stock.

It's easy to find investments tracking the performance of popular market benchmarks. But to achieve true diversification, you need to add investments whose performance is not correlated with the ups and downs of stock and bond markets. An innovative type of investment — exchange-traded notes, or ETNs — may solve this problem.

You can make a gift to future generations that?s not only tax-efficient, but also gives you a greater degree of control over how your gift is used.

Build the protection and performance you need to meet your family's unique goals

A Client Review will help your wealth management strategy stay on track

No matter how you got it, what you do early with your gain will dictate how long it will last.

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