Portfolio

State Street Corp. has added portfolio construction tools to its web-based hedge fund-of-fund platform, AlphaFrontier, which also includes custody, fund accounting, cash management, registration, risk services, investor services and credit.

To prevent other target-date investors from being burned as so many were in 2008, when the average 2010 and 2015 fund lost 25% of its value or more, more advisers are telling their clients that they need to look closely at the asset allocation and glidepaths of these funds so that half of their portfolios are not exposed to stocks on the eve of their retirement.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a Wells notice to Charles Schwab informing the company it plans to sue it over two bond funds that held mortgage securities since the company marketed the funds as safe, high-yielding alternatives to money market funds.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has tapped Adam Storch to be the managing executive of the newly created Division of Enforcement.

The investors buying into stocks and sending the Dow up 53% since its March 9 low have continued to be pension plans and hedge funds; retail investors in mutual funds are certainly not driving those sales, the Washington Post reports. Only in the past two weeks have fund companies and financial advisers heard from retail investors curious about re-entering the market.

In the six months through September, inflows to mutual funds in Japan rose 27% to $23.5 billion, according to the Investment Trust Association of Japan. In the first half of the year, the average Japanese mutual fund rose 17.2%, according to Nomura Research Institute.

More than three-quarters, 77%, of 401(k) investors have not made any changes in the past 12 months leading up to April, J.P. Morgan Retirement Plan Services found in a survey titled “Anything But Certain.”

Long-term stock and bond mutual funds took in $11.41 billion in the week ended Oct. 7, marking the 30th straight week of inflows, which now total $316 billion, the Investment Company Institute said.

As many investors have become totally risk-averse following the market crash, UBS Wealth Management has just issued a retirement planning report that proposes segmenting the process into three buckets.

The variable annuity value proposition appears to be eroding, as mutual fund sales outpaced those of annuities during the second quarter, and more of the same is expected through next year.