Portfolio

NEW YORK-Traders feel more optimistic about the stock market than they did six months ago, said Kelli Keough, vice president of active trading at Charles Schwab, at a breakfast briefing Wednesday, to announce the launch of the firm’s new platform for active traders.

State Street Global Advisors on Thursday launched the SPDR S&P Emerging Markets Dividend ETF and the SPDR Barclays Capital Emerging Markets Local Bond ETF.

Male and female participants in MassMutual’s retirement savings plans had about the same among of their retirement assets in asset allocation options in the fourth quarter of 2010—24.3% for women and 24.0% for men. However, nearly all of the women’s allocation was to target-date funds, while the men had half their assets in target-date funds and half in risk-based options.

I’m all for the notion of having options, but if you look at just the ETF universe there are more than 1,000 on offer

Factor Advisors has launched five leverage exchange-traded funds that hold both a bull and a bear position. The initial FactorShares ETFs combine holdings in the S&P 500 Index, U.S. Treasury bonds, gold, oil and the U.S. dollar.

Vanilla as they may be, annuities still represent the lifeblood of many investors' portfolios because they deliver a steady, predictable income throughout retirement.

Equity funds net $6.42 billion, with the bulk going to domestic stock funds.

Two state-specific municipal bond portfolios managed by BlackRock Inc. were slated to be closed to investors effective Wednesday, a day after the firm began liquidating the funds' investments, according to a Feb. 18 addendum to the funds' prospectuses.

Americans held $15.6 trillion in retirement assets at the end of the third quarter of 2009, according to the ICI, but as we emerge from the Great Recession, advisors and investors want to know what they need to do to retain and grow assets from here.

Fidelity Investments reported Wednesday that the average 401(k) account balance held with it hit a 10-year high of $71,500 at the end of 2010. For participants who continuously contributed to their 401(k) the average balance increased to $183,100 from $59,100 a decade ago.