Money Management Executive Latest News

Long-term stock and bond mutual funds took in $10.37 billion in the week ended Aug. 26, marking the 24th straight week of inflows totaling $250 billion, the Investment Company Institute reported.

Mutual funds, pensions and trusts sold $1.8 billion of U.S. consumer stocks in August, the biggest amount in 14 years, Bloomberg reports. The category includes department stores, distillers and hotels.

Independent advisers who custody with Charles Schwab now have a new website designed to help them more efficiently manage client accounts with better integrated data.

ALPS Advisors has adopted the $75 million Activa Value Fund from Activa Asset Management. Wellington Management, however, will continue to sub-advise the fund, and Mammen Chally will continue as portfolio manager.

Nationwide Mutual Insurance will continue its support of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College through May 31, 2010. Nationwide has partnered with the center since 2005 to raise awareness about retirement issues through the National Retirement Risk Index.

As indexes got snatched up by exchange-traded fund launches, firms turned to more and more esoteric investments. But with the popularity of the $604 billion ETF industry growing so quickly—assets are up 64$ or $54 billion over the past year—newcomers to the field are going back to the basics, The Wall Street Journal reports.

After last year’s disastrous decline in all investment sectors, one of the worst years for investing since the 1930s, financial advisers are seriously rethinking traditional diversification and modern portfolio theory, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority beginning Dec. 1 will increase the deposit customers must place with their brokers before placing a margin, or borrowed, investment in a leveraged exchange-traded fund. The greater the leverage involved in the ETF, the bigger the deposit.

September is College Savings Month and a bill in front of Congress would give financial advisers more flexibility to help their clients who invest in 529 college savings plans.

Fifty-four percent of workers are satisfied with their company’s retirement program, and 61% say it is their primary retirement savings vehicle, Watson Wyatt found in a survey of 2,200 workers in February. Twenty-nine percent said that were it not for their retirement plan, they would not be saving for retirement.