Portfolio

The so-called “Godfather of Soul” passed away on Christmas Day 2006, and generously left his $100 million fortune to a special trust set up to help poor and needy children. Yet, four-and-a-half years later, not one child has seen a cent. Why?

Despite their reputation for taking advantage of upsets in the markets, hedge funds wisely ran for the exit from stocks between 2007 and 2009, according to a report by Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business Assistant Professor of Business Itzhak Ben-David. Ben-David conducted the study along with Rabih Moussawi of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Francesco Franzoni of the Swiss Finance Institute and the University of Lugano.

Investors have developed a serious aversion to U.S. equity mutual funds, which is upsetting the balance of fund flows, according to Morningstar.

The correlation between stocks and the S&P 500 has reached a 20-year high of 0.73, up from 0.44 in July—posing a real challenge for individual fund managers, according to Goldman Sachs.

Both the Conference Board and the State Street confidence indexes plummeted in August, with the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index falling 14.7 points from July, to a reading of 44.5, and the State Street Investor Confidence Index declining by 12.9 points, to 89.6.

BlackRock has filed to create proprietary indexes for its iShares exchange-traded funds. The indexes will be "transparent to the public," the exemptive order says, indicating the indexes could be for actively managed ETFs.

Standard & Poor's has launched the MILA 40 Index, tracking the largest and most liquid stocks trading on the Mercada Integredo Latino Americano (MILA) platform, the joint venture of the Chile, Columbia and Peru stock exchanges. Stocks in the index must have market caps above U.S. $100 million.

Exchange-traded fund assets rose 0.8% in July to $1.086 trillion, up from $1.077 trillion in June, the Investment Company Institute reports. Assets rose 32% from $821 billion a year ago, July 2010.

A lot of the banks actively unloading problem loans share a telling characteristic — ownership by big private equity groups or hedge funds.

Investors relieved by the relatively minimal impact of Hurricane-turned-Tropical Storm Irene pushed stocks higher Monday as the Dow Jones Industrial average stormed up 254.71 points to close at 11,539.25.