Portfolio

Quarterly fee payments save the day, as new product sales suffer from a market dip.

The Hartford Mutual Funds will permanently reduce fees on six of its fixed income funds, effective Nov. 1. The biggest reduction is in the gross expenses on share Class A on The Hartford High Yield Fund, which are being reduced by 15 basis points to 1.25%. The other funds are seeing reductions in fees of between two basis points and 10 basis points.

Standard & Poor’s has launched a new U.S. Mutual Fund Excellence Awards program to recognize those funds that consistently achieve the highest ranking in S&P’s five-star rating system.

ETFdb.com, an information source and database of exchange traded funds, has launched a free conversion tool that allows investors and advisors to map current mutual-fund holdings to their equivalent ETFs, which typically have cheaper expense ratios and are easier to trade.

Looking to fill a growing need for advisers for its brokerage business at a reasonable cost, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. has been training promising candidates in-house, in a departure from standard bank practice.

The E*Trade fund supermarket now includes 18 funds from USAA Management, 12 of them fixed income. USAA manages $43 billion in mutual funds and $6 billion in managed accounts.

The family office sector continues to experience key personnel shifts and increased consolidation.

Money managers buck August’s pessimism to enjoy a rosy September.

New tool approximates costlier mutual fund portfolios in exchange traded funds.

The Basel III bank capital requirements proposed earlier this month threaten to eviscerate the supply of eligible investments for tax-free money market funds — an industry already struggling with a severe supply shortage.