Portfolio

Retirement plan providers are closely eyeing the new employer-only 401(k) plans as a vehicle that could capture greater rollover assets, open new markets and provide inroads to the high-net-worth crowd.

Open to the back pages of the "Money and Investing" section of the Wall Street Journal and you'll find a series of indexes, including those from the paper's parent company, Dow Jones. Then flip to fund listings provided by Lipper and you'll find a list of funds delineated by category: small-cap, large-cap, value, core, growth.

At the height of the bull market, employee benefits packages were used to recruit new talent, but with massive layoffs occurring across the economy, those packages, including 401(k) benefits, are being trimmed.

It's separately managed account mania. In the past month alone, three different studies examining managed acount products and prognosticating their impact on the fund world were issued by industry consultants.

Hedge funds may turn out to be a greater competitor to mutual funds than most people expected. While hedge funds are extremely risky vehicles that do not appeal to investors who are interested in safer products, funds of hedge funds offer some of the advantages of hedge funds with an enormous reduction of risk. Although the number of funds of funds is relatively small right now, it's growing, and may soon capture a lot of assets that ordinarily would have gone to mutual funds, say industry observers.

The retail investment arm is launching a new high-net-worth wrap product that allows financial advisers to build, manage and customize portfolios of funds and individually managed accounts.

This year Nuveen Investments launched 18 new closed-end, fixed-income funds. Last year it launched zero.

With U.S. warplanes swarming over Afghanistan and Special Forces troops readying to take to its ground, financial planners have begun to get calls from investors inquiring about defense-related investing.

Fidelity Investments Institutional Brokerage Group and Frank Russell announced an alliance in which Fidelity will distribute Russell's new multi-manager separately managed account program through its registered investment advisors and correspondent broker/dealers.

A poor economy and rising unemployment rates are making an already difficult defined contribution market even harder for plan providers. Because plan sponsors are occupied with more pressing business concerns in a difficult economic environment, changing or adding a plan provider to their defined contribution plan is not a priority. That has made gaining market share very difficult for many 401(k) providers, say industry observers.