Portfolio

Charles Schwab Corp. of San Francisco has just re-launched a large-cap mutual fund using a proprietary equity research system.

Responding to a protracted bear market, fund complexes registered 34% fewer new mutual funds with the Securities and Exchange Commission this year than during the year-ago period, according to data provided by New York researcher Strategic Insight.

Bucking the current trend to lower the amount of money investors must initially pony up to qualify for a separately managed portfolio, Fenimore Asset Management (FAM) of Cobleskill, N.Y., has done just the opposite. In June, it raised the minimum it accepts for separately managed accounts to $1 million from the previous $750,000 level.

Starting a new mutual fund in these volatile times isn't the most enviable of tasks, but it's one that Kent Gasaway relishes.

In a recent advertisement, Lincoln Financial Group of Hartford, Conn., told financial planners, "Customized financial solutions. Just another way we make you look like the good guy." In fact, many separately managed account providers have begun to make separate accounts' customized features the cornerstone of their marketing efforts, according to Cerulli Associates of Boston.

ARLINGTON, Va. - Mutual fund companies have done a good job of banking assets in 401(k) plans, but with so many people retiring or changing jobs, fund companies often lose those assets at those rollover junctures. With some strategic marketing and some personal advice, however, funds can increase their chances of hanging onto money that rolls out of 401(k) plans, reports Boston-based Cerulli Associates in a recent study, "The Retirement Income Market and Asset Retention Strategies."

The initial public offering market has dried up over the past two years, and the reputation of the industry has been tarnished by questions about IPO laddering schemes and the conflict of interest of sell-side analysts. But one small mutual fund is registering signs of improvement for the going-public market - the $20 million IPO Plus Fund, run by Renaissance Capital of Greenwich, Conn.

It always comes back to performance.

An announcement by 401(k) plan provider CitiStreet last week that it will provide workers with expanded advice about investment choices in their retirement plans may be pushing government regulations to their limits in an aggressive effort to retain rollover assets, observers said last week.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has taken action to authorize the industry's first fixed-income exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Until now, ETFs have been based only on equity indexes. Pending completion of the registration process, the new ETFs are expected to be launched in late July.