Alternative investments

Wells Fargo & Co. and UMB Financial Corp. have each succeeded in the health savings account business, but many of their customers have come through unexpected routes.

Funds that invest in high yield bonds have experienced a rate of inflows unseen for almost five years, according to recently released data.

In the midst of market turbulence, many investors are blindly rushing to gold without any concern for the long-term consequences of doing so.

NEW YORK—The European Union’s UCITS, or “Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities,” have been gaining tremendous traction throughout the EU, and even Latin America and Asia. Middle Eastern countries are even beginning to warm up to the instruments, as they are tightly regulated by their host countries and designed to protect the end investor.

Harry Lange, a manager of Fidelity Investment’s popular $40.5 billion Magellan fund, believes that once the effects of the central bank’s rate cuts and the government’s economic stimulus packages kick in, U.S. stocks could be near an “important bottom.”

Investors seem to be moving more money to U.S.-based stock mutual funds.

Rumors are floating around that investment-giant Morgan Stanley will enter into its first fund venture in China as early as next month, Reuters reports.

Michael Iavarone may have rung the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange yesterday and be poised, as owner of the magnificent Big Brown, to win the Triple Crown, but he can’t win them all.

A study by the Genocide Intervention Network, conducted with Bloomberg, has found that companies that invest in countries with poor human rights practices make bad investments, both financially as well as ethically.

Despite strict guidelines and barriers within China, which tend to turn off global fund houses from conducting business, Fidelity International recently announced that it is ready and willing to pursue joint ventures there sometime in the near future.

Industry leader SEI recently concluded in a white paper that collective investment trusts (CITs) are becoming more popular in the defined-contribution retirement market. In the first quarter of 2008 alone, 63 new collective trusts were launched, and from 2004 to 2007 CIT assets actually tripled.

In an already crowded field, Northern Trust Corp. is the latest financial-services company to try and make its mark in the exchange-traded fund business.

Talk about tapping into the powers that be inside the Beltway.

Fidelity Ventures is backing several new Internet start-ups in hopes of competing with online giant eBay, The Boston Globe reports.

Morgan Stanley has been shuffling executives and its sales strategy for its Van Kampen mutual fund unit, The Wall Street Journal reports this morning. The funds are part of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, which has $600 billion in assets and accounted for 40% of the firm’s income before taxes in 2007. Approximately one-third of that income is generated by the fund division, a third of which is sold to retail investors. The rest is primarily institutionally and foreign-sold.

Direxion Funds of New York and Boston hopes to break new ground for itself as well as the leveraged ETF marketplace.

Including lift-outs and partial deals, investment firms have shelled out more than $50 billion so far this year to acquire mutual fund companies and other asset management firms, in a record 241 deals this year, according to Jefferies Putnam Lovell, a division of Jefferies.

The CGM Mutual Fund may be nearly 80 years old, but it’s acting like a fund half its age, writes the Motley Fool.

Dow Jones Financial Information Services has announced the launch of Private Equity Source, a database for tracking buyout and growth transactions in the U.S. and Europe.

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