Investment insights

Advisors remain very bullish on U.S. equities and plan to allocate a greater percentage of their clients’ portfolios to the asset class over the next six months, according to a new survey by Aberdeen Asset Management.

The Vanguard Group had its first monthly redemptions in almost 20 years in June as investors sold bond funds in anticipation of the Federal Reserve scaling back its asset purchases.

Total assets in municipal bond funds rebounded after a week of record outflows, even as investors continued to redeem their cash for the sixth week in a row.

Investors yanked $28.54 billion from long-term mutual funds were $28.54 billion for the week ended Wednesday, June 26, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Asset management deal activity rose during the first four months of this year as compared to a year earlier, according to a new report by Freeman & Co.

The $2.1 trillion global exchange-traded fund industry has been growing at a rapid clip since the SPDR S&P 500 ETF was launched two decades ago as a means for institutional investors to access passive exposure to the S&P 500 Index.

Eighty percent of investors under the age of 40 don’t feel like they are getting adequate financial advice from their advisors, according to new findings from Cerulli Associates, leaving the doors wide open for asset managers and retirement plan recordkeepers to fill the advice gap.

The muni market, reeling from one of the worst selloffs in 25 years this week, witnessed record-breaking outflows to muni bond funds of $4.53 billion for the week of June 26.

A majority of wealthy clients say they are holding onto cash even as confidence improves.

Judd Gregg, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association's CEO, discusses what still needs to be done to restore investor confidence in the financial markets.

The tax-advantaged plan was supposed to help average Americans save for their children's college education. Today, advisors are increasingly recommending them as an estate planning tool for the wealthy.

Rather than chasing company payouts, get better tax advantages with a strategy based on stock buybacks.

Once lost, a reputation is hard to regain, and it’s costing financial services companies hundreds of millions in sales.

Tax-exempt money market funds had outflows of $314.7 million in the week ended June 24, decreasing total net assets to $261.48 billion, according to The Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

Municipal bond mutual funds that report flows weekly recorded $4.53 billion in outflows for the week of June 26, Lipper FMI numbers showed, after $2.22 billion of outflows reported the previous week.

Investors overreacted to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s comments that the central bank could reduce monthly bond purchases, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein said.

Bond managers from DoubleLine Capital LP’s Jeffrey Gundlach to Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Bill Gross are telling investors the worst may be over for Treasury bonds after 10-year yields rose to a 22-month high.

Bond yields and risk spreads were too low two months ago and global markets that were too levered are now derisking, according to Bill Gross, manager of the world’s largest mutual fund at Pacific Investment Management Co.

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The core portfolio allocation for moderate investors has traditionally been a 60% equities and 40% fixed-income mix. But changing market dynamics may pose a challenge to this construct going forward for three important reasons that you and your clients need to be aware of.