Portfolio

Credit card companies commonly offer cash rewards and other prizes to encourage the use of their cards.

Delaware Investments of Philadelphia believes that there is an appetite for institutional funds in defined contribution plans and has created a new 401(k) product that offers numerous institutional products to plan sponsors and participants.

Credit Suisse First Boston of New York and Tremont Advisors of Rye, N.Y. are teaming up to create a series of hedge fund indexes and products to go along with them.

J. & W. Seligman & Co. of New York is planning to offer four new mutual funds. The funds - the Seligman Time Horizon 30, Time Horizon 20, Time Horizon 10 and Harvester funds - are asset allocation funds. Seligman described its plans in a registration statement filed with the SEC Aug. 13.

There is a mutual fund product in development that could only be imagined in the age of Cyberspace - a value fund that plans to use Internet message boards to assist individual investors to influence the actions of public companies.

StockJungle.com, a first-time mutual fund adviser, plans to launch four online mutual funds, including a novel S&P 500 Index Fund that will be free to investors.

American Express Financial Advisors of Minneapolis is launching a combined brokerage and mutual fund service in an effort to compete with full-service brokers and mutual fund sellers E*Trade of Menlo Park, Calif., and Charles Schwab Investment Management of San Francisco.

Scudder Kemper Investments of Boston has signed a deal with Financial Engines of Palo Alto, Calif., the Internet investment advisor, to provide online investment advice to sponsors of especially mid-sized defined contribution plans. The deal was announced August 2.

Viking Mutual Funds, a new firm in Minot, N.D., is now offering its first three funds, which the SEC approved on Aug. 3. They are Viking Tax-Free Fund for Montana, Viking Tax-Free Fund for North Dakota and Viking Large-Cap Value Fund.

E*Trade Group of Menlo Park, Calif., filed with the SEC in early August to offer two new funds, one based on e-commerce and a second based on businesses in Europe, Australia, Asia and the Far East.