Portfolio

The Hartford is betting that enhancements to its variable annuity suite will pull it ahead of competitors in the race to offer investors secure retirement income options.

Investors' infatuation with both exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and dividend-paying stocks helped Global X Funds' new SuperDividend ETF fly out of the gates in its first trading day last week.

Tradeweb said it added high-yield bonds to its European credit trading platform. The addition of high-yield bonds was intended to help asset managers "to enhance portfolio returns,'' in a period of low interest rates.

The stars in the world of socially responsible investing are companies like Pax World, Parnassus and Ariel, which have leveraged the model to gain billions of dollars of assets under management.

Life insurance sales through banks, which set records in 2010, are now trending downward sales fell 30% in the first quarter, according to research firm Kehrer-LIMRA.

CHICAGO -- Just last month BlackRock’s Bob Doll told a room full of almost 2,000 advisers at the IMCA Annual Conference in Las Vegas that he believes the U.S. will continue to outperform developing markets and outperform Europe and Japan. “Investors should be overweight the U.S.” he said.

Slowing economic growth abroad combined with the Eurozone debt crisis pushed commodities lower in May after months of strong, sustained gains.

Dallas-based Highland Funds' Long/Short Healthcare Fund this week received a five-star rating from Morningstar which ranks the mutual fund among the top 10% of funds in the healthcare category.

The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index rose to from -47.1 to -45.9 in the week ended June 5, the third straight week it has risen and its best reading since the end of April.

CHICAGO -- Seeking to make it easier for financial planners and investors to analyze the vast mutual fund universe, Morningstar will soon launch forward-looking, analyst-driven fund ratings.