Portfolio

There was a time that the highflying world of hedge fund managers appeared to stratospherically surpass that of mutual fund managers. After all, some of the top hedge fund managers have averaged annual salaries of $250 million in recent years, with $1 billion paydays not uncommon for top stars.

With the markets siphoning value from mutual funds and investors running for cover to the tune of billions of dollars in redemptions a month, Fidelity Investments is trying to hold onto customers’ assets by promoting FDIC-insured certificates of deposit.

Finance and technology stocks have put the Fidelity Magellan fund in a worse position than its benchmark, the Standard & Poor’s 500, and even the fund’s manager says he’s disappointed, Dow Jones reports.

Rather than honor the $1.4 billion in redemptions, or 14% of the $10 billion flagship hedge fund at Paul Tudor Jones’ asset management firm on Dec. 31, the company will delay making those payments until March 31, 2009, in hopes that the market will improve and assets can be sold for higher values, Dow Jones reports. Normally, the fund honors redemptions once each quarter.

Target-date funds may certainly be increasing in popularity, but the tools to help financial advisers sort through the available choices are sorely lacking. That was the finding of a recent poll of 168 advisers to defined contribution plans, conducted by Harris Interactive for JPMorgan Funds.

The Rydex Investments AdvisorBenchmarking Advisor Confidence Index, which gauges advisers’ outlook on the economy and the stock market, rose 4% in November to 82.46, up from 79.07 in October.

Be it large-, medium- or small-cap, value or growth, there are buying opportunities galore in the stock market, according to veteran Lord Abbett value manager Robert Fetch. “I am seeing valuations I haven’t seen in decades, across the capitalization spectrum,” Fetch told Barron’s.

CIBC announced Friday that it has finally settled 2004 charges that former trader Paul Flynn permitted hedge funds to market time mutual funds.

Mutual Funds Have Bled $2.5 Trillion Since May

Putnam Selects Farrell as Head of Equity Trading