Portfolio

SEI finds that talking about money may still be taboo.

Investors tired of miniscule returns from their money market accounts and intrigued by small-cap funds in a variety of industries pumped more than $11.3 billion into diversified U.S. equity mutual funds in the first quarter and more than $14.8 billion into global sector funds.

Waddell & Reed Financial, the Overland Park, Kansas, mutual fund complex, said it earned $45.6 million, or $0.53 per diluted share, in the first quarter.

And global sector equity funds saw $14.8 billion in inflows.

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index increased slightly in April to 65.4, up from 63.8 in March (1985 = 100). The Present Situation Index also increased, to 39.6 from 37.5, and the Expectations Index rose as well, to 82.6 from 81.3.

OppenheimerFunds has launched the Oppenheimer Short Duration Fund, a fund that will seek to take advantage of imbalances in the credit market and provide competitive yield to money market funds and a relative stability of principal.

Wasatch Funds has launched the Wasatch Emerging India Fund, which it says it the first actively managed India mutual fund with a small-cap bias.

Intech has launched the Alpha Capture Index strategy as a passive alternative to capitalization-weighted indexing. Intech says the strategy has the potential to outperform a market-cap-weighted index and is more stable than an equal-weighted portfolio.

Van Eck has launched the Market Vectors Investment Grade Floating Rate ETF, an exchange-traded fund that seeks to track the Market Vectors Investment Grade Floating Rate Index, an index of corporate U.S. dollar-denominated investment grade floating rate notes.

Waddell & Reed Financial, the Overland Park, Kansas, mutual fund complex, said it earned $45.6 million, or $0.53 per diluted share, in the first quarter.