Portfolio

There is a lot of concern among investors about the looming Aug. 2 debt ceiling crisis, with investors wondering whether they should take steps to protect their assets in the event of a major crisis such as soaring interest rates and a decline in bond prices or even a stock market crash.

SunAmerica Asset Management has launched the SunAmerica Global Trends Fund, a fund sub-advised by Wellington Management and that combines 10 global asset classes with a rules-based asset allocation strategy that seeks to move in and out of changing markets.

BlackRock said Thursday it is moving the production of its research on exchange-traded funds to a new unit and the long-timer producer of its "ETF Landscape" reports will be leaving the company.

Even if the politicians in Washington do manage to raise the debt ceiling, all the red ink and all the money printed by the Federal Reserve to prop up the economy over the past three years make it likely, according to some experts, that inflation could be on the rise and that reality has many investors understandably unnerved.

SunAmerica Asset Management has launched the SunAmerica Global Trends Fund, a fund sub-advised by Wellington Management and that combines 10 global asset classes with a rules-based asset allocation strategy that seeks to move in and out of changing markets. The fund will invest primarily in futures contracts and also use technical analysis. It will have between 0% and 10% exposure to each of the global asset classes.

Half of all companies say they are likely to take such defensive actions as cutting capital spending and laying people off if the U.S. government defaults on its obligations, a survey of 305 finance and treasury executives by the Association for Financial Professionals found.

BlackRock plans to get active in active ETFs, its chairman and chief executive said this week.

Emerging Global has launched a suite of 11 emerging markets exchange-traded funds under the brand of GEMS (Global Emerging Market Sector) Funds. Three of the funds are rebranded and eight are brand new.

While hedge funds-of-funds tout their diversification as a limit on risk, this is not the case, according to research by NYU Stern Finance Professor Stephen Brown and co-authors Greg Gregoriou and Razvan Pascalau of SUNY College at Plattsburgh School of Business and Economics. In extreme market conditions, the professors attest, a broadly diversified hedge fund-of-fund is actually more sensitive to risk than an average hedge fund.

BlackRock plans to get active in active ETFs, its chairman and chief executive said Wednesday.