Portfolio

In a major sting operation by a joint task force involving the Securities and Exchange Commission’s South Florida Regional Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami and the FBI, an alleged scheme involving several penny stock promoters and several CEOs of microchip companies has been exposed, with fraud charges filed against the principals.

Portfolio Rethink has introduced seven new indexes that it says are alternatives to the 19th-century Standard & Poor’s 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average. Today, the company says, companies are global and investors are much more sophisticated.

Following an announcement from The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in January that it ordered Charles Schwab & Company, Inc., to pay $18 million to repay investors in its YieldPlus Fund after investment losses, a FINRA Arbitrator awarded damages, attorney’s fees and other costs to a couple invested in the fund.

When it comes to sovereign risk ratings, it could be a case of "out of Greece and into the fire" as venerable credit-rating agency Standard & Poor's this week joined Moody’s in issuing a sobering warning that Italy could be the next European nation in line for a downgrade.

BlackRock favors U.S. growth stocks and quality U.S. bonds. GMO recommends cash rather than other forms of “tail-risk” protection. In Russell survey, bullish sentiment for U.S. large cap growth stocks dropped but still a majority view. Barclays expects that central banks will ignore recommendation by Bank of International Settlements to act against inflation.

Last year was a good one for registered investment advisors, according to the 2011 RIA Benchmarking Study from Charles Schwab, the largest focused solely on RIAs.

A new study to be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, has found that when people are reminded of money, they respond differently and mimicking can backfire and make establishing a relationship and a sense of trust even more difficult for financial advisors.

Guinness Atkinson Asset Management has launched the Renminbi Yuan & Bond Fund, which it says is the first traditional open-end mutual fund to invest directly in bonds denominated in the Chinese currency, Renminbi.

First Trust Advisors is planning to launch the First Trust ISE Cloud Computing exchange-traded fund on Nasdaq on Wednesday, which it says is the first ETF focused on cloud computing.

Rising oil prices, $14 trillion in federal debt, the near shutdown of the government and a slowing global economy resulted in "horrible" results for equity funds in the second quarter, said Tom Roseen, head of research services at Lipper, during his company's preliminary performance report on equity funds in the second quarter of the year.