Portfolio

The combined assets of U.S. exchange-traded funds rose 64% from the same time last year, posting an increase of more than $300 billion to reach $830.86 billion for the month ending in April, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Financing a college education is a major concern for most high school seniors as they prepare for graduation, according to a study by Fidelity Investments titled "College Bound and Cost Conscious: A Survey of High School Seniors."

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged a Walt Disney Co. employee and her boyfriend with insider trading for plotting to sell confidential information about the company’s quarterly earnings to hedge funds.

Financial advisors have lost their springtime swagger.

Fixed and variable annuities and mutual funds all rise at the end of the first quarter, but will the run last?

The Internal Revenue Service, concerned that some Build America Bonds are being sold to investors at prices that are too high, is urging municipal issuers to track the trading of their BABs through the Electronic Municipal Market Access system and to question underwriters about the pricing.

With the SEC money market fund rules taking effect this Friday and the Libor up sharply, fund managers are reportedly beginning to see lending to European banks as too much of a risk. The bigger worry is this pullback has the potential to lead to another credit crunch like the one that nearly crippled the capital markets in 2008.

Kenneth A. Johnson, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new chief financial officer as of last Friday, takes over the agency’s financial operations just as the regulator prepares to amass a bigger operating budget and beef up examinations of mutual fund complexes and hedge funds to get ahead of systemic risk and ponzi schemes of the Madoff magnitude.

High-net-worth individuals in developed markets are far more downbeat about global economic prospects than those in emerging markets, according to Barclays Wealth Insights Volume 11: The Changing Wealth of Nations.

If the recession has any pluses at all, it’s that people now seem to be more mindful of how uncertain the market—and their future—really is.