Portfolio

QuantShares on Wednesday announced it has licensed seven indexes in the Dow Jones U.S. Thematic Market Neutral Indexes series for individual exchange-traded funds. The ETF start-up has been planning the funds since January.

A tip of the hat to Standard & Poor’s?

NYSE Euronext said it experienced huge surges in stock-trading activity on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean during August. The operator of the New York and Paris stock exchanges said it handled 2.2 million trades a day in Europe, up 70.3 percent from a year ago. This was a record, it said.

Deloitte Consulting has promoted Elizabeth Krentzman from principal to head of its mutual fund practice, a new position at the firm that oversees its auditing, tax, financial advisory and consulting businesses for the fund industry.

Investors have flocked to exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded notes through the first eight months of the year. Year-to-date through August, net cash inflows were $73.2 billion, a 54% increase over the same period in 2010, according to data from National Stock Exchange, Inc.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Los Angeles district office has obtained an emergency court order halting all operations and freezing the assets of a company it says has been “creating the illusion” for seven years that it was taking investors’ money and investing it in life settlements.

Franklin Templeton has launched the Franklin Templeton Global Allocation Fund, which will take a tactical asset allocation approach and consistently adjust its allocations to a widely diversified portfolio of equities, fixed income, cash and derivatives.

Forty-two percent of hedge fund managers became bearish on stocks in August, up markedly from 27% who were pessimistic on equities in July, according to a survey by BarclayHedge and TrimTabs Investment Research. This is the largest percentage of bearish hedge fund managers in a year.

Nasdaq OMX Group said a London broker is installing software from its SMARTS subsidiary to monitor trading activity across a series of derivatives markets for potential abuses.

Exchange-traded funds, a relatively cheap and tax efficient way for individual investors to invest in equities while maintaining a degree of diversification in portfolios, are becoming more popular among wealthier investors and their advisors.