Portfolio

Wealthy investors will continue to be careful with their money, Schwab found in a survey of 1,100 independent advisers with more than $252 billion in assets under management, the latest installment in its semi-annual Independent Advisor Outlook Study.

American Beacon Advisors has launched the American Beacon Global Real Estate Fund, which aims to deliver high total return through a combination of current income and capital appreciation and which will be sub-advised by CB Richard Ellis Global Real Estate Securities.

Warburg Pincus will invest $230 million in Primerica, the mutual fund and life insurance sales unit of Citigroup, in return for a 23% stake, filings show.

AdvisorShares and Peritus Asset Management have just filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to offer the Peritus High Yield ETF, an exchange-traded fund that will invest in senior and subordinated corporate debt and loans across various industries and maturities with the goal of delivering both capital appreciation and high current income.

ProShares is planning to offer four international sector and three U.S. regional banking exchange-traded funds, which will bring its stable of ETF offerings to 99.

Direxion has launched a pair of long and short exchange-traded funds linked to the performance of short-term U.S. Treasuries, the Direxion Daily 2-Year Treasury Bull 3x Shares and the Direxion Daily 2-Year Treasury Bear 3x Shares. The funds are linked to the one-security NYSE Current 2-Year U.S. Treasury Index.

Ten of Vanguard’s index funds and corresponding exchange-traded fund share classes are now linked to updated MSCI 25/50 sector indexes that have expanded their concentration of holdings to comply with IRS diversification rules.

Direxion, in conjunction with sub-advisor IPOX Capital Management, has launched the Direxion Long/Short Global IPO fund, which will provide retail investors with institutional-style access to investment opportunities in the global initial public offering and spin-off market. The long portion of the portfolio will invest in promising IPOs one year old or less, and the short portion will seek out stocks in their second to fourth year that are expected to underperform.

Sales declined 11% from the previous quarter and 40% from a year earlier.

As the race to rake in breakaway brokers continues to heat up, it seems that independent broker-dealers, are failing to spend on the areas of technology that matter most to independent advisors: customer relationship management and integration.