Portfolio

The average U.S. stock fund declined 37.9% in 2008, slightly worse than the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 33.8% loss. It was the Dow’s worst year since 1931, when it declined by more than 50%. Meanwhile, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 37%, its worst performance since 1937.

Fidelity Investments has named former Evergreen Investments Chief Executive Officer Peter Cieszko to become the president of Fidelity Investments Institutional Services Company.

In recent years, smart investors have diversified their portfolios into alternative investments such as real estate and commodities, to buoy their holdings in times of market stress. But 2008 proved to be an anomaly, with those asset classes falling right down along with stocks. The average real estate and commodity mutual fund fell 40% to 50% last year, The Wall Street Journal reports.

More than 40 inverse exchange-traded funds run by Rydex Investments and ProFunds are passing on sizable capital gains to investors. For those who hold those funds in taxable accounts, the taxes they will owe will range from 50% to even as high as 80% of assets, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Paul Mazzilli, formerly executive director and head of the exchange-traded fund research team at Morgan Stanley, has joined IndexIQ as senior advisor, in charge of developing products for high-net-worth investors.

Sponsors of 401(k) plans worry that investors will either invest too heavily in risky equities, or too conservatively in money market funds, but in 2007, at least, target-date funds allocated investors’ money wisely across the board, Vanguard found.

Renaissance Institutional Futures, a $3 billion hedge fund run by James Simons, is foregoing management fees for 2009 as a response to poor performance in 2008.

Long-term U.S. government funds yielded 22.5% in the fourth quarter of 2008, for a three-month performance of 27.1% year to date, according to data from Morningstar Inc., as investors flocked to safety.

Neuberger Berman Names Non-Executive Chair, CEO

The Securities and Exchange Commission has received an emergency court order to halt a suspected Ponzi scheme targeted to Haitian-American investors.