Money Management Executive Latest News

Hedge funds returned negative -2.7% in November, bringing their year-to-date decline to 18%, according to the Hennessee Hedge Fund Index, The Wall Street Journal reports. While the decline is painful, it is at least less than the -5.5% loss in October and the double-digit declines in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, the Dow Jones Industrial Index and the Nasdaq.

Fidelity Investments has created a credit card in partnership with American Express that allows customers to transfer rewards from retail purchases to their individual retirement accounts.

Citing steep redemptions and continued market declines, Fidelity Investments Chairman Ned Johnson indicated the firm’s 7% layoffs, or loss of 3,000 jobs, could surge if conditions worsen, the Boston Herald reports.

By overturning a lower court’s dismissal of a case against former Columbia Funds executives James Tambone and Robert Hussey, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is permitting the Securities and Exchange Commission to proceed with its market-timing lawsuit against the two men.

David R. Holst, 43, a mortgage broker in Tucson, Ariz., pleased guilty of fraudulently collecting $350,000 from mutual fund investor clients and recklessly, illegally gambling the money, the Arizona Daily Star reports. He accepted the charges of securities fraud and filing a false income tax return.

Personal financial columns are beginning to warn investors that fund fees could rise in 2009, as mutual fund companies try to grapple with fewer assets under management.

Despite some doomsayers predicting the Dow Jones Industrial Average could fall to 7,000 or lower, most of the speakers at the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit said that the market has probably hit bottom. That said, they don’t see volatility going away anytime soon.

Buttressed by favorable interest rates and investors looking for shelter from falling equity prices, U.S. fixed annuity sales set a new quarterly record. Total U.S. sales of fixed annuities rose to an estimated $27.1 billion for the third quarter, according to a Beacon Research study of 51 insurance companies representing 87% of the market. Sales were up 54% from last year's third quarter, and up 10% from the previous quarter, marking the highest sales since the study began in 2003.

PNC Global Investment Names Wolcott President

Seeing traffic on Yahoo's finance website and Marketwatch.com burgeon, Fidelity Investments has decided to try its hand at financial news for itself by revamping its website.