Portfolio

ProFund Advisors has created two new no-load funds: the UltraEurope ProFund and the UltraShort Europe ProFund. The two funds seek performance relative to the ProFund Europe Index (PEI), which is based on indexes of the markets in Britain, France and Germany. The UltraEurope fund seeks to double the results of the PEI, while the UltraShort Europe seeks to double the inverse of the PEI.

Ranson & Associates of Wichita, Kan. has made a second offering for its Value Line No. 1 Strategy Trust, a Unit Investment Trust (UIT) first offered in January. It has since raised $27.5 million.

The mutual fund family of Mennonite Mutual Aid (MMA) of Goshen, Indiana, has become a success story for small funds that invest in socially-conscious ways.

MassMutual Retirement Services of Springfield, Mass., has revamped its web site with a sophisticated calculator for its defined contribution and defined benefit customers. The calculator automatically lifts information on client accounts out of various MassMutual records into an analytical engine capable of processing various scenarios for a shareholder's retirement. Also, the calculator stores whatever new information the customer supplies to it. The calculator can even automatically re-balance a shareholder's portfolio.

The investment adviser to the Internet Fund - a portfolio that returned better than 300 percent for the 12-month period ending Jan. 31 - is considering opening a new fund.

Deutsche Fund Management has introduced the DB Americas Bond Fund, a fund that will concentrate on fixed-income securities in the Americas and the Caribbean. The fund will be offered to non-US residents. Deutsche Fund Management will sell the fund through its own and other private banking groups around the world.

State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) is offering a new fund which will invest primarily in companies whose employees are members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM). The SSgA IAM Shares Fund will invest approximately 66 percent of its assets in IAM-represented companies. The IAM represents 734,000 working and retired members.

John Hancock Funds has begun offering level-load shares for nine more of its mutual funds, bringing to 21 its funds with this pricing option. Instead of charging a sales commission at the time of purchase or when the shares are redeemed, level loads spread the cost over time.

John Nuveen & Co. of Chicago has introduced an investment portfolio of ten companies based on Fortune magazine's "America's Most Admired Companies" list. Fortune compiles this list of ten outstanding companies each year, interviewing more than 10,000 analysts, top executives and board directors to ask them their opinions of companies' financial soundness, long-term investment value and use of corporate assets. Fortune also looks for outstanding innovation, product or service quality, management quality and employee talent.

SunAmerica Asset Corp. has introduced the Tax Managed Equity Fund, designed to produce high total returns and low taxes by using an optimization model developed by sub-adviser J.P. Morgan. J.P. Morgan first began offering this strategy of reducing capital gains taxes to high-net-worth clients in the 1980s. Steven Neamtz, executive vice president of SunAmerica Asset Management, believes investors will increasingly look to minimize after-tax returns.