Portfolio

Despite all of the personal pain and economic havoc of the financial crisis, at least it is teaching people to be responsible, once again, about their money, said Ken Dychtwald, CEO of Age Wave.“People have been frightened. People have lost money. But in some ways, there is great hopefulness,” he said. “The fact that people are sobering up and learning important lessons and being more responsible for their money—that’s extremely positive.”People are learning how to get back to basics and live within their means, and planning for retirement is uppermost among their concerns, Dychtwald said.A survey that his firm conducted with Harris Interactive among 2,082 Americans between the ages of 21 and 84 found that 60% lost money in mutual funds, stocks or 401(k) plans in the past year, and, on average, they think it will take seven years to recoup those losses.Eighty percent said they have learned important lessons about financial responsibility, and 70% plan to continue working in retirement.

The head of prime brokerage at Morgan Stanley, Stuart Hendel, has resigned to “pursue outside interests,” according to an internal memo cited in The Wall Street Journal. Hendel is being replaced by Alex Ehrlich, according to the report, who has led prime brokerage services at UBS for the past six years.

After shopping its back-office support division in India since last year, which is based in Bangalore and Chennai and employs 5,000, Fidelity has decided to scrap the sale, Reuters reports.

At the Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago this week, speakers are expected to concentrate on the economy and how asset management firms should respond to the state of the financial markets.

Mutual fund and other institutional investors are moving heavily into financial stocks, believing they probably hit their lowest point in the first quarter and are poised for sharp gains, according to strategists at Oppenheimer & Co.

Government actions to stabilize asset-backed commercial paper, including the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper (ABCP) Money Market Mutual Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (AMLF) and the Money Market Investor Funding Facility (MMIFF), are helping to stabilize ABCP and other short-term instruments, Fitch reports. However, ABCP credit ratings are not improving.

In its zeal to apply a free market philosophy to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Bush administration created an environment where the agency's enforcement staff was unable to take definitive policy positions or bring enforcement actions, according to Mercer Bullard, associate professor of law at the University of Mississippi School of Law.Testifying on May 7 at a Senate Banking subcommittee hearing, Mercer said that the problems at the SEC reflect a state of "deregulatory capture," where the commission was unaware of and unable to respond to many enforcement matters before they surfaced.

Besides learning that investors have not bailed out of their 401(k) plans, contrary to scare-mongering media reports, there was one other surprising moment at this month's General Membership Meeting of the Investment Company Institute. And that was when Richard Davis, chairman of U.S. Bancorp, looked directly at ICI President Paul Schott Stevens and urged him to prompt his member mutual fund companies to figure out how the financial crisis has affected various age groups.

DB, DC Plans Changing Investing Composition

Jefferies Selects Peters to Lead Wealth Management