Portfolio

It is ironic that Standard & Poor’s, one of the three major credit rating agencies at the heart of the financial crisis, would downgrade the United States’ credit rating from triple-A to AA+. After all, S&P should have properly assessed the asset-backed housing securities that led to the Great Recession not as investment-grade but what they actually were. Junk.

As trading opens on another nervous week on Wall Street, mainstream investors are casting their votes on prospects by racing out of mutual funds that invest in stocks long-term.

There’s more bad news for the economy and the stock market after a report from Thomson Reuters and the University of Michigan found that their Consumer Confidence Index in early August plunged to its lowest point since May of 1980.

After a week that started with a broad-based equities free fall -- only to be interrupted by massive gains and then equally gigantic losses in successive trading days -- ended on an upbeat note with the Dow Jones Industrial average adding 125 points, or 1.1%, to close at 11,269.02.

Investors took money out of U.S. bond and stock mutual funds because of the increase in economic uncertainty in July, according to research released on Friday by Strategic Insight.

Investors are rushing out of equities as markets grow increasingly volatile, but maybe there’s another alternative to just sitting on the sidelines and leaving stocks to the big institutional investors.

Charles Schwab grew its total client assets under management to more than $1.65 trillion, bringing in a total of $9.9 billion in net new assets in July alone.

During the first trading session after Standard & Poor’s downgraded its rating of U.S. debt from AAA to AA+, investors got out of stocks and parked their money in...U.S. Treasury bonds.

Mutual fund asset growth worldwide is expected to rise by a moderate 10% this year, according to Financial Research Corp. By comparison, the industry’s assets rose 16% in 2010.