Portfolio

Chicago businessman Urooj Khan jumped for joy when he learned he had the winning numbers for a million-dollar lottery drawing last summer. Too bad he never had a chance to enjoy it.

Morningstar announced today that it has awarded the Gold to two mutual funds, one a former Silver-rated fund and the other a brand new Medalist.

Bandon Capital Management has hired Whitney Dow as Managing Director, responsible for spearheading the firm’s marketing and relationship management efforts.

Classic investment style boxes are out and themes are in, Burt White, LPL Financial’s managing director of research, told advisors.

Pacific Investment Management Co., the world’s largest manager of actively run bond funds, has appointed Marc Seidner as interim head of global equities after Neel Kashkari’s departure last week, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Vanguard is switching indexes for five of its funds today.

Mutual funds that invest in U.S. stocks had another strong week, picking up $3.5 billion. They have now picked up $16.1 billion in a three-week period, a strong start after 25 weeks of declines.

Lack of knowledge is the top reason for not using alternative investments followed by lack of track record, according to Cambridge, Mass.-based consulting firm Cogent Research. As popular of an investing tool as they have become, there are different theories about what role alternatives play in a portfolio as well as what actually constitutes an “alternative,” so it’s easy to understand why there could by some misunderstandings.

Stock funds took in an estimated $6.35 billion in inflows for the week that ended Jan. 23, down 31% from the $9.2 billion they took in a week earlier. Still, the inflow is almost twice as large as a year earlier.

First, there was the Great Recession.