Portfolio

A Massachusetts court ruled that the government did not impede the free speech rights of hedge fund Bulldog Investors manager Philip Goldstein by restricting his website only to qualified investors.

If there is anything positive to be gleaned from the financial crisis, it is that 401(k) plan designs need to be revised so they are more resistant to extreme volatility and market downturns, Putnam Investments CEO Robert L. Reynolds told executives at the National Investment Company Service Association’s East Coast Regional Meeting in Boston.

Resource and metal mutual funds both rose an impressive 11% in September and are among the best-performing sectors year-to-date, potentially signaling an economic rebound, The Globe & Mail reports.

Invesco is in the running to acquire the fund business of Van Kampen, which has $550 billion of assets under management, and the deal could be valued anywhere between $1 billion and $2 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports.

On Wall Street magazine and MainStay Investments present the second annual Branch Managers of the Year.

Invesco and TCW Group have raised more than $1.13 billion from private investors to buy toxic assets from the government as part of the Public-Private Investment Program, the Department of the Treasury indicated.

Robert McCann has settled his lawsuit with his former employer Bank of America/Merrill Lynch today, clearing the way for him to possibly head up the U.S. brokerage arm of UBS.

Standard & Poor’s has launched four securities lending indexes based on intermediary prices for stocks in its top three benchmark indexes, the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400 and S&P SmallCap 600, as well as the sector sub-indexes for the three indexes.

Jefferies Asset Management has introduced what it believes is the first commodities exchange-traded fund tied to an equities rather than a futures index, and it is planning other equities-based commodities ETFs in the near future.

“Move past the crisis,” Barclays Wealth urges investors in its latest monthly strategy update. It would be wise to position for the economic recovery since most economists are revising their growth forecasts for 2010 upwards.