Alternative investments

BlackRock’s Canadian investment arm, BlackRock Investments Canada, Inc., is now rebranding to iShares the names of most of the exchange-traded and closed end funds previously marketed under the Claymore Investments brand.

In order to improve investor access to the fund, PIMCO will change the NYSE ticker for its Total Return ETF from TRXT to BOND on April 4, 2012.

Santa Fe, N.M.-based Teucrium Trading, LLC today unveiled the Teucrium Agricultural Fund, which is being touted as the first fund to offer exposure to agricultural commodities in a single fund of exchange-traded funds.

iShares has filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a frontier market exchange-traded fund.

J.P. Morgan Worldwide Securities Services today said that it has been appointed by Yorkville ETF Advisors, LLC to provide custody and exchange traded fund transfer agency services to its newly launched Yorkville High Income master limited partnerships ETF.

Portland, Ore.-based Invest n Retire, LLC, a record keeper for tax-deferred retirement plans, has appointed Agustin J. (Gus) Fleites as chief executive officer.

Horizon Investments has launched a no-load actively-managed mutual fund that invests in exchange-traded funds.

Exchange-traded funds are all the craze and new ones are coming out of the woodwork daily. But do investors really know what they’re buying in a hedge replication strategy or an Eastern European index fund?

Mutual funds may have been an American innovation. But asset managers will now go to China, Brazil, India or wherever returns can be found, according to Alan Reid, founder Forward Fund Management, at the Investment Company Institute's Mutual Funds and Investment Management Conference.

A shift in American investor appetite towards investment outcome, as opposed to relative return, is changing their buying behavior, according to research published by Casey, Quirk & Associates and the eVestment Alliance.

Insurer and wealth manager The Hartford is trimming its focus to a few core business areas: property and casualty, group benefits and mutual funds.

Alternative investment manager Direxion has launched an exchange-traded fund that provides investors with equal weighted exposure to the constituents of the NASDAQ-100 index.

Market Vectors, the exchange-traded product arm of Van Eck Global, is tapping into the resilience of Indonesia’s economy by launching a fund focusing on the country’s small cap equity sector.

San Francisco-based Forward Management is looking to boost it sales and marketing efforts in anticipation of increasing advisor interest for alternative mutual funds.

Russell Investments has launched two exchange-traded funds focusing on high dividend yield investments in American companies.

Van Eck Global is stirring up another exchange-traded fund in the form of the Market Vectors Global Chemicals ET, which will bet on U.S. and non-U.S. chemical concerns.

On March 1, Bill Gross, co-founder of the Pacific Investment Management Company, officially crossed the line and fired his opening salvo in the exchange-traded fund business.

WisdomTree Investments, Inc. is visiting the NASDAQ MarketSite in Times Square on Thursday with Western Asset Management Company, a subsidiary of Legg Mason, to celebrate the launch of the WisdomTree Emerging Markets Corporate Bond Fund.

La Jolla, Calif.-based Altegris is looking to beef up its managed futures mutual fund, dubbed the Altegris Managed Futures Strategy Fund, a fund of funds, by adding two more managers to its stable.

San Francisco, Calif-based Forward Management, LLC today unveiled its latest offering, the Forward Managed Futures Strategy Fund, a systematic, trend-following vehicle that will bet long and short exposure on liquid futures contracts in commodities, equities, bonds and currencies.