Portfolio

Charles Schwab Investment Management of San Francisco last week introduced the Schwab Total Stock Market Index Fund. The fund is designed to track the performance of the U.S. stock market, as measured by the Wilshire 5000 Index. The index contains nearly every U.S. publicly-traded stock.

Capital Research & Management of Los Angeles last week introduced the New World Fund, a fund that will focus on emerging markets. Capital Research & Management is known as a conservative company and has opened only five new funds since 1990.

Americans pay scant attention to a future employer's 401(k) or other retirement savings plan when they accept a new position, a survey by Fidelity Investments of Boston has found.

Ford Motor Co. of Detroit has made Fidelity PortfolioPlanner, an online retirement tool sold by Fidelity Investments of Boston, available to all Ford employees. PortfolioPlanner helps 401(k) investors with retirement planning and asset allocation decisions, and gives them examples of model portfolios.

North American Funds of Boston, has named Global Alliance Value Investors as the sub-advisor for its North American Equity Income Fund.

NewRiver Investor Communications of Watertown, Mass., has developed Prospectus Express, patent-pending software that would allow mutual fund companies to post prospectuses and other lengthy fund documents in a format that would allow investors to immediately view and retrieve those documents. Other prospectus software allows users to print out documents but not view them online. Prospectus Express also enables users to search within documents for keywords. Currently, that is not possible through the SEC's Edgar database.

First Trust Corp. of Denver has created a program whereby employers can offer employees as many as 2,000 mutual funds from 200 fund families for their 401(k), 403(b) or 457 savings plans. First Trust is calling the new program OptionsPlus.

AIM Advisors of Houston has introduced Class B and Class C shares for its AIM Large Cap Growth Fund.

Stein Roe Mutual Funds of Chicago has launched the Stein Roe Growth Investor Fund, a no-load, multi-cap growth fund. The fund will mimic the Stein Roe Young Investor Fund, which delivered a 17.65 percent return in 1998. David Brady and Erik Gustafson, who have co-managed the Young Investor fund, will also assume responsibility for the Growth Investor Fund.

Branching into the retail retirement services business, American General Financial Group is creating a family of 23 mutual funds called the American General Fund Group.