Alternative investments

Market Outlook

NEW YORK—FTSE is ramping up its partnership with the Conflict Securities Advisory Group, which has been focusing on Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria since 2001, through the new FTSE CSAG Terror-Free Index Series, launched here Wednesday at a press conference at the Women’s National Republican Club.

An exchange-traded note that shorted gold saw futures prices rise about 14% last week when gold prices plummeted.

Rydex Investments is offering a new fund of funds that offers exposure to the alternatives marketplace to individual investors.

Many community banking companies have wealth management units, but lately more small and midsize wealth managers have been getting into the banking business.

Europe’s richest families are shifting their investments from traditional assets to hedge funds and commodities, according to a new report profiled by Reuters.

As the stock and bond markets continue to take a beating, institutions, individuals and hedge funds have begun pumping dollars into commodity mutual funds and other investment vehicles based on commodities.

Wealthy wine and art lovers are buying up cases of Bordeaux and Picassos with the hope of offsetting the general market downturn, Reuters reports.

The wealth management unit of Citigroup Inc. has agreed to buy Legg Mason Inc.’s managed account trading and technology operations.

Only a minority of financial institutions are actively promoting health savings accounts.

Predictions that the mutual fund industry will embrace elaborate alternative strategies, driven in part by European regulatory changes, may be a bit preliminary, according to some state-side asset management executives.

In joining the parade of mainstream wealth managers starting alternative investments units, MFS Investments of Boston is making a long-term commitment to giving its institutional investors access to emerging hedge fund managers.

In their zeal to cash in on the latest investment craze, fund companies all too often have displayed a lack of originality and bad timing when launching new funds. Since exchange-traded funds have taken all of the major indexes, those that have come late to the ETF rage have come out with incredibly narrow niche and enhanced index funds that defy logic.

In their zeal to cash in on the latest investment craze, fund companies all too often have displayed a lack of originality and bad timing when launching new funds. Since exchange-traded funds have taken all of the major indexes, those that have come late to the ETF rage have come out with incredibly narrow niche and enhanced index funds that defy logic.

Most alternative investment products are neither well-understood nor on the shopping lists of affluent investors with $500,000 or more investable assets. Moreover, fewer than one-third discuss including alternative investments in their portfolios with financial advisers.