Portfolio

A barrage of dour economic reports, the recent market correction, the U.S. credit downgrade, job insecurity and lower individual net worth pulled the Bankrate Financial Security Index down to 92.3.

U.S. prime money market funds are lowering their exposure to European banks and holding shorter maturity securities, Fitch reports.

With stocks bouncing around like they’re on a trampoline, it can be difficult for investors to find companies that offer any possibility of steady growth or protection against a further slump -- particularly with the economy looking increasingly weak.

iShares has launched the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Small Cap Index Fund.

With stocks bouncing around like they’re on a trampoline, it can be difficult for investors to find companies that offer any possibility of steady growth or protection against a further slump -- particularly with the economy looking increasingly weak. But a handful of consumer goods stocks might ease their pain.

Missing the 10 best days of stock market performance over many years can hurt your portfolio’s performance -- and the only way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to stay invested for the long haul. But one investment firm's research found there's a tremendous flaw in this strategy.

Variable annuities continued to surge in the second quarter of this year, with total sales reaching $40.9 billion, an increase of 16% over the same period last year, according to LIMRA, the Windsor, CT-based financial services research firm.

iShares has launched the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Small Cap Index Fund.

Van Eck Global has introduced the Market Vectors Mortgage REIT Income ETF. The fund tracks the Market Vectors Global Mortgage REITs Index, an index that requires constituent companies to derive at least 50% of their revenues from mortgage REITs.

The downgrade of U.S. debt may have led to more market volatility than the Flash Crash. That’s the initial result of comparing the average daily volume of stock trading in August 2011 to the volume in May 2010, when stocks fell nearly 1,000 points at one point in a single day of trading.