Portfolio

Despite a skittish U.S. economy, most commercial real estate investors remain upbeat and cautiously optimistic about the industry’s future, according to the PwC Real Estate Investor Survey. In fact, the majority continues to invest in all sectors of commercial real estate, as they continue to see signs that the industry’s fundamentals are stabilizing.

Fidelity Investments on Wednesday announced the launch of four Fidelity Defined Maturity Funds, a series of four actively managed municipal income funds. The funds seek to bridge the gap between individual bonds and bond funds and, therefore, fill a gap in municipal bond investing, Fidelity said.

Treating employees well is savvy management, according to “socially-responsible” investors such as Jerome Dodson, founder of the Parnassus Workplace Fund. And for several years, the independent research firm, Russell Investments, has reported that the benefits of happy employees may actually show up in better stock returns.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC will pay $153.6 million to settle charges that it misled investors in a complex mortgage securities transaction just as the housing market was starting to plummet, the Securities and Exchange Commission said.

DTCC Insurance & Retirement Services has launched a new analytic reporting service for insurance carriers and broker-dealers that sell annuities.

Legal controversy has surrounded the Estate of Michael Jackson ever since he died almost two years ago. Trial & Heirs did a year in review article last year; it’s almost time for year two. You can now add a new lawsuit — over $17.5 million worth of insurance — to the list.

In bull markets, many investors may overlook the importance of dividends. But when markets become more tentative or start to slump, dividends can look a lot more attractive and one S&P analyst found some international funds investors should be watching.

Henry Kaufman, one of the first economists to earn the now overused sobriquet “Dr. Doom” because of his generally bearish views on interest rates during the 1970s and '80s, is now warning that the conglomeratization of financial institutions, the continued securitization of non-marketable assets and the extreme leveraging which led to the most recent crash leave the global financial system vulnerable to new and potentially more devastating crises.

With only 51% of Americans believing they will have enough money to enjoy a comfortable retirement, an all-time low, the Country Financial Security Index fell one point in June to 63.7.

Deutsche Bank has rebranded five exchange-traded target-date funds, previously known as the TDX Independence Funds, as the db-X Target Date Funds.