Money Management Executive Latest News

Fidelity Investments has launched a new Web-based platform for registered investment advisers. Called WealthCentral, it is designed to combine the various functions and tools that RIAs need, including financial planning, portfolio management and customer relationship management.

The Department of Labor has decided not to include stable-value funds as one of its recommended default options for 401(k) plans under the Pension Protection Act. Instead, the DOL will make it easier for sponsors to select balanced funds, lifecycle funds and a professionally managed, diversified portfolio as the default choices.

Schroeders is in the early stages of planning to expand into India and reportedly in talks with a number of possible partners. Already, however, the firm has recruited SV Prasad from Zurich Financial Services, where he was president of the Indian division, to serve as managing director of the new venture.

The distinction between mutual funds and hedge funds is becoming increasingly blurry, since many mutual funds are turning to using such hedging tactics as short selling, leveraging portfolios and investing in options, South China Morning Post reports.

Standard & Poor’s has launched the S&P Select Frontier Index, which will invest in 30 of the largest and most liquid companies in frontier markets, including emerging Europe, Asia, South America and the Middle East. It is a subset of the S&P Extended Frontier 150 Index.

With the departure of 13 veteran portfolio managers from Janus over the past year, many young analysts at the firm have been promoted, Rocky Mountain News reports.

Forty-seven percent of Americans find investing confusing, and it’s particularly true for women (56%) as opposed to men (38%), according to a survey of 669 investors commissioned by Bankrate.

Mutual fund managers who lived through the stock market crash of Oct. 19, 1987, when the market plunged 22.6%, remembered the lessons learned, including the importance of seeking an outside point of view—particularly when the market is soaring, having a contingency plan and educating investors, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Although her bosses at Canary Capital characterized market timing and late trading as mere “skimming,” hedge fund manager Noreen Harrington said she thought it was “grand larceny” and decided to blow the whistle because she knew it was harming individual investors, the Edmonton Journal reports.

Hedge funds in Europe have just proposed that they self-police, in an attempt to ward off regulation. They are offering to volunteer information about their holdings, risk management, governance and valuation techniques.