Portfolio

The Internal Revenue Service’s initiative to determine whether municipal bonds are being initially offered at prices that fail to comply with tax requirements has left issuers upset and confused about the definition of issue price and what specific abuses the IRS is looking for.

With performance under par, hedge fund managers got smaller year-end bonuses for 2011, according to the Hedge Fund Compensation Report.

A date is set for the exchange-traded equivalent of the world's largest mutual fund to get going.

Drum roll, please.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 70 points to 12,462.47 Tuesday, the fourth positive session in six trading days so far this year. Tech stocks also perked up as the Nasdaq rallied up 26 points to finish at 2,702.50.

NYSE Euronext said it had not been notified by the European Commission of any “official decision” on its merger with Deutsche Boerse, after a pair of media reports that the nearly year-old deal will not be approved on anti-competition grounds.

With performance under par, hedge fund managers got smaller year-end bonuses for 2011, according to the Hedge Fund Compensation Report, released Tuesday.

When it comes to bond funds — or any mutual funds — past performance is not the best way to analyze them. Instead, S&P Capital IQ Analyst Todd Rosenbluth suggests investors should consider the credit risk of the underlying bonds, as well as a fund’s duration, i.e. price sensitivity to changes in interest rates.

Zephyr Associates, a financial analytics software provider to financial advisors, is seeing a steady increase in the percentage of RIA firms among its clients.

The fund invests at least 80% of the value of its net assets in a diverse equity portfolio, with a focus on larger companies with market capitalizations equal to or more than $1 billion.