Portfolio

E*Trade of Palo Alto, Calif. plans to expand its family of index funds with an Internet index fund. The new fund, the E*Trade E-Commerce Index Fund, was filed with the SEC on July 26. The fund will invest in the stocks in the Goldman Sachs E-Commerce Composite Index, which tracks companies that derive most of their revenue online or sell e-commerce infrastructure.

Allianz Group of Munich, Germany is developing its breadth of financial products in the U.S. and is planning a family of mutual funds to be sold here.

Barclays Global Investors - the giant institutional money management firm in San Francisco - is planning to offer 51 exchange-traded index funds, a lineup that is expected to raise the firm's presence among retail investors and increase competition in a slice of the open-end index fund market.

Texas money manager J. Paul Hamilton is getting into a part of the mutual fund business that does not get a lot of attention - the irrevocable trust business.

Morgan Stanley Dean Witter of New York plans to introduce a growth fund that will invest in the companies at which teenagers spend their money.

Nomura IBJ Global Investment Advisors of New York plans to offer by year-end defined contribution pension plans modeled on 401(k) plans in the U.S. Nomura IBJ Global is a joint venture between Nomura Securities and the Industrial Bank of Japan Ltd., both headquartered in Tokyo.

The U.S. Department of Labor in conjunction with the Investment Company Institute and other trade groups is urging employers to use a new form that requires 401(k) providers to make detailed disclosures about their fees.

Guinness Flight Global Asset Management has won the license to the Internet Stock Index from internet.com Corp. of Westport, Conn. Guinness Flight has filed with the SEC to create a new no-load fund, the Guinness Flight internet.com Index Fund, which is expected to be available to investors on July 30.

Dow Jones Indexes of Princeton, N.J., has established a new index that will track multi-national companies. The Dow Jones Titans Index will watch 50 of the world's largest multi-national companies. Both John Nuveen & Co. and Nike Securities L.P. are expected to start products that use the index by the third quarter of the year, according to Dow Jones Indexes.

American Century Investments of Kansas City, Mo., has enhanced its quarterly customer account statements to reflect individual rates of return in each customer's personal portfolio, as opposed to providing performance figures for each fund in its family. For instance, if a particular fund has increased 12 percent in the quarter but represents only 15 percent of the investor's portfolio, the statement indicates that fund's contribution to the investor's portfolio is 0.8 percent (15 percent of 12 percent.)