Portfolio

An 11.4% decline in the S&P 500 Index fails to deter group plan participants’ long-term plans.

SEC reprieve for money funds that would require them to approve of the credit rating agencies they must use to determine whether a security is eligible for investment.

If there’s a day of reckoning on the horizon for municipal closed-end funds, the market hasn’t spotted it as investors continue to fork over a premium for the trusts.

Issuers priced $23 billion in junk bonds in August, the seventh largest monthly U.S. high yield volume on record, according to Dealogic.

The operator of a pan-European data network has deployed high-speed optical networking gear, to achieve trip times of 4.22 thousandths of a second between London and Frankfurt and 2.65 milliseconds between Paris and Brussels.

The independent wealth manager’s move marks another step in its aggressive growth strategy.

A National Bureau of Economic Research study has concluded that while Build America Bonds have succeeded in their mission to lower financing costs for state and local governments, traditional tax-exempt bonds still offer more enticing after-tax yields to individual investors.

According to a survey by Cogent, among the top five providers of exchange-traded funds, Vanguard is the only one to make gains in 2010, climbing 10 percentage points to become a “true iShares challenger.”

Financial advisers rate Vanguard the No. 1 provider of exchange-traded funds, giving the company high marks on nine out of 10 metrics, Cogent Research found, in its 2010 Adviser Brandscape survey of 1,560 advisers. Vanguard rated a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 33%, compared to market share leader Barclays iShares’ 20%. NPS is a standardized loyalty metric developed by Bain & Co. and deployed across many industries, according to Cogent.

While 2010 fixed-annuity sales can’t hold a candle to freakishly high sales a year ago, widening spreads are making it a pretty good year.