Alternative investments

Curian Capital LLC of Denver, the separately managed account arm of Jackson National Life Insurance Co., is developing a managed account for investors who need their portfolio to produce regular income as they enter retirement.

FolioDynamix, a provider of unified managed accounts technology and services, has acquired SunGard Advisory Technologies, which provides investment management and wealth management platform solutions to financial services organizations nationwide, including brokerage firms, RIAs, asset management firms and banks.

With consumers nervous about their financial health, banks such as Wells Fargo and Citizens Bank see this need as an opportunity. Wells Fargo is making licensed brokers available to customers to discuss risk, assets and investment strategies. The bank's goal is to reach customers who aren't high-net-worth, but still have a mix of products across a number of institutions: deposits, loans, retirement plans, mutual funds and education financing.

As the stock market continues to stumble along, high-net-worth investors are becoming increasingly pessimistic about the economy and dissatisfied with the performance of their financial services providers.

The Securities and Exchange Commission could mandate the use of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) in mutual fund risk return summaries by as early as the first quarter of next year, according to industry experts, putting many fund companies on the data-tagging fast track.

Fulton Financial Corp. in Lancaster, Pa., is preparing to offer a fee-based advisory service for its retail investment customers, the head of its wealth management and trust businesses said.

Annual contribution limits on health savings accounts are preventing investors from accumulating enough money in them to help them gain traction, according to a report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute. For an individual, the annual contribution is currently $2,900, and for families, it’s $5,800.

Vanguard is now permitting its largest international fund, the Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund, to purchase foreign stock directly, rather than through other Vanguard index funds.

Hedge funds are enjoying tremendous success in Hong Kong and Singapore, with the number of managers and assets under management going through the roof, according to data from Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission and Singapore’s Monetary Authority.

After years of waiting to be compensated for damages done to their investment holdings by market timers and late traders, Janus investors will finally receive $100 million worth of restitution.

Morningstar has added global real estate and currencies as two new categories it will track for mutual funds, and alternative investments as a new broad asset classes.

Investment firms will continue to hone their specialties and look to raise capital through mergers and acquisitions throughout the rest of the year, according to a report by Jefferies Putnam Lovell.

Many companies have moved millions of dollars of obligations for executive benefits into pension plans of regular worker to acquire greater tax breaks and pay for executives’ supplemental compensation and benefits, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Mutual funds that place bets against the market by shorting stocks are doing better than typical, long-only funds. Mutual funds that short stocks take on different levels of risk, using various derivatives, such as futures, to protect the bets taken against indexes.

Despite hedge funds that have received returns on investments in commodities and emerging-market stocks, the hedge fund industry, as a whole, is set to turn in their worst monthly performance since July 2002.

The United Services Automobile Association (USAA) has created five new target retirement funds to simplify investing for retirement and to provide investors greater value by offering lower costs that are 47% below the latest similar Lipper category expense ratio average.

The board of directors at The Vanguard Group Inc. has elected F. William McNabb III as its chief executive officer.

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidance last week for fund boards of directors in assessing their firm’s soft-dollar practices. The SEC said it was issuing the guidance a full two years after the limitations it put on soft dollars in 2006, restricting it only to research, due to rapidly evolving market and trading practices. True enough, there are wide discrepancies among brokerages today, due to rapidly evolving markets, trading practices and electronic crossing networks. Fund companies have until Oct. 1 to comment on the SEC’s guidance.

America's new mass affluent blend so effortlessly into society that it's often impossible to tell them apart from a traditional middle class family one day, or from an upper class family the next.

WASHINGTON — The Investment Company Institute last Monday urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to expand its proposed credit rating agency rules on structured products to include municipal securities, and to increase the secondary market disclosure requirements for the municipal market.