Alternative investments

More than 110,000 people working in finance in the U.S. have lost their jobs so far this year, but that could nearly double to more than 200,000 in the final weeks of the year, the Anniston Star reports.

Reserve Funds will distribute $14 billion to investors in the Primary Fund on or around Dec. 5.

If investors have learned one thing from the financial crisis, it is that, eventually, level heads and long-term investing will prevail. In that spirit, sister publication Investment Dealers' Digest recently spoke with a man known for having one of the most level heads in the industry, John Bogle, founder of Vanguard Investments, about what he sees for mutual funds and other investment firms in the years ahead.

The financial turmoil in the markets is far from over, and mutual fund firms can expect assets to continue to decline further, investors to remain skittish, and regulators to be reactive well into 2009, experts say.

In a widely anticipated move last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission unanimously approved a requirement for mutual funds to send investors a short-form, summary prospectus.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wants to beef up hedge fund regulation as part of his plan for a systemic risk regulator, he said Thursday.

Americans’ consumer attitudes and behaviors have shifted dramatically in the past six months, according to an October study by AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company.

BlackRock will be eliminating a number of positions among its 5,500 ranks, Bloomberg reports, quoting an internal memo it obtained. It will be the first time in its 20 years of existence that it has eliminated jobs.

With investors moving so much money into cash and cash-equivalent instruments to avoid the continually downward spiraling stock market, it has never been more important in the history of modern investing for mutual fund companies to reach advisers and investors with forceful yet honest messages about the value of long-term investing and areas of the market that are safe, outpacing benchmarks or, perchance, even delivering positive returns.

The Securities and Exchange Commission will not revisit 12b-1 fees by the end of the year, Andrew Donohue, director of the division of investment management, told Reuters.

The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets is looking at ways to better understand and regulate derivatives and credit default swaps, which essentially are insurance on corporate debt.

Referring to today’s stock and corporate prices as bargain basement, the chief executive officer of Aberdeen Asset Management of the U.K. said he is interested in purchasing other companies, particularly hedge funds-of-funds and private equity firms, Reuters reports.

It’s not just plain-vanilla equity funds that investors are bailing out of. In the past two months, investors have redeemed 16% of assets from exchange-traded notes, bringing assets under management from a peak of $7.3 billion in June to $3.9 billion today, The Wall Street Journal reports. The rest of the decline is due to falling prices in commodity and currency ETNs.

Long-short money managers have been breathing a sigh of relief with the end to the Securities and Exchange Commission's ban on short sales of financial stocks. The three-week SEC ban on the short sale of some 1,000 financial stocks that ended Oct. 9 had wreaked havoc among money managers.

PALM BEACH, Fla. - Insurance companies and mutual fund firms are jumping on the bandwagon to provide guaranteed retirement income solutions, but experts say these types of investment options won't see wide adoption rates among the general public until they become a qualified default investment alternative (QDIA) in 401(k) plans.

Spurred by Americans' investment losses this year, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) is calling for a re-examination of 401(k) plans that could lead to a radical overhaul of the popular tax-deferred savings vehicles, Pensions & Investments magazine reported last week.

Exchange-traded funds continued attracting new investors in October, though most of the month’s $7.3 billion in net inflows came from three big names, according to the National Stock Exchange.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management LP plans to launch a new municipal closed-end fund as part of its existing lineup of tax-exempt mutual funds, according to an Oct. 24 registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The addition, which is to be called the Goldman Sachs Municipal Opportunity Fund, will bring the firm's number of tax-free mutual funds to six.

With the volatility of the stock market seemingly ever on the rise, perhaps now is a perfect time for the launch of 300% leveraged exchange-traded funds from Direxion, both on the long and the short side.

NEW YORK - The fragmented, free-for-all liquidity in the marketplace is aggravating the extreme volatility in the stock market, and experts say a more organized, specialized system is needed.