Portfolio

Just when the advisory community was hoping that it had put Bernie Madoff behind it, federal authorities announced that two of the disgraced financier’s lieutenants have been indicted on criminal charges and are also facing a civil complaint from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Meanwhile, the Internal Revenue Service announced earlier this week that it has withdrawn the John Doe summons in the UBS AG scandal in which the U.S. demanded that the company hand over…

Fixed annuities give way to variable annuity and mutual fund sales, but September was nothing to write home about.

College savings funds have slashed fees this year, Morningstar reports, making them worth another look.

Many active fund managers get paid to predict where the market is headed—and to get there a step or two ahead of their rivals.But the management of Allianz Global Investors’ Global Investment Solutions Conservative Allocation mutual fund has shunned that approach, and in doing so achieved remarkable success.

AllianceBernstein has launched the AllianceBernstein International Discovery Equity portfolio, a bottom-up fund that will look for small- and mid-cap companies outside the U.S. with strong prospective earnings growth, valuation and management.

Despite the growing argument that buy-and-hold investing and diversification no longer make sense, Burton Malkiel, Princeton economics professor and author of “A Random Walk Down Wall Street,” writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Thursday that is absolutely not true.

IndexIQ, an innovator in hedge fund replication and index-based alternative investments, has partnered with institutional consulting firm Rocaton Investment Advisors to bring alternative investments to small and mid-sized 401(k) plans. Rocaton has also made a minority investment in IndexIQ.

Across all income groups, retirement income from employer-sponsored retirement plans is more prevalent among retirees today than in 1975, when sweeping new retirement plan regulations were enacted, most notably the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, according to a report from the Investment Company Institute.

How are market conditions? Where are things headed? It all depends on who you listen to and whose surveys you trust.

Mark Notkin, portfolio manager of the $12.8 billion Fidelity Capital & Income Fund, the best-performing high-yield fund in the past five years, says the rally in junk bonds is over. His fund has delivered an average of 9.9% a year and is up 14% this year.