RJ and Makay

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (MSSB) has hired Jeff Hack from J.P. Morgan Chase as its chief operating officer in one of several organizational changes announced by company president Gregory Fleming.

According to an internal memo, Hack will oversee MSSB's ongoing technology/operations integration activities. Morgan Stanley is in the midst of integrating its brokerage with that of Smith Barney, which has about 17,800 financial advisors, the most on Wall Street.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has reduced its estimate for first-quarter GDP growth from 2.2% to 1.5% — the most pessimistic forecast on Wall Street.

Although the job market is improving, wage growth isn't keeping up with inflation, the brokerage points out, adding that recent data on construction have also been weak. Furthermore, even if there are only modest revisions to January and February data and monthly consumption grows 0.3% in March, annualized consumption will still be just 2.3% in the first quarter, Merrill says.

Financial professionals might be interested in an InvestmentNews report about a poll by Advisors Trusted Advisor, which recently uncovered some surprising trends in the financial advice industry. Of the 262 advisors polled, more than half were at fee-only firms, a quarter worked as independent reps, and the rest were employed by wirehouses, brokerages, banks or insurers. Survey participants had a median of about $400 million in assets under management.

Here are the seven trends the poll revealed, in descending order, just as described by InvestmentNews: