Money Management Executive Latest News

Mutual funds are suggesting sweeping investment policy changes for the coming year, and hoping shareholders will allow them to put more money in foreign stocks and real estate, according to The Wall Street Journal.

A number of illegal funds that purport to deliver high returns in foreign investments are soliciting assets from Chinese investors, China Daily reports. One such fund, the Switzerland Mutual Fund, promises a 300% return within 450 days and has raised $12.9 million since it launched late last year.As a result, China’s foreign exchange regulator, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, is warning investors against the scam.

A judge has ruled that Keith Tucker, the former chief executive officer of Waddell & Reed, was, indeed a resident of Kansas City between 1999 and 2003, not Texas, and that he must pay $1.2 million in taxes, penalties and interest. Jackson County Circuit Court Judge John M. Torrence made the ruling, The Kansas City Star reports.

The April 16 deadline for fund companies and their intermediaries to ink information-sharing agreements in compliance with Rule 22c-2 has set off a flurry of negotiations and shifted attention to the next component of the rule: data analysis.

The comment period for the independent directors rule ended a month ago, and as the Securities and Exchange Commis-sion nears a vote on the measure, speculation is increasing that it will bend to the industry's fierce opposition to having fund boards run by independent chairmen. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox recently said that one alternative might be appointing a lead independent director, and industry insiders have indicated that the SEC might merely call having an independent chairman a "best practice."

Beacon Rock Settles Timing Case for $475K

Just as the Oscar buzz surrounding Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" pushed discussions about global warming out of academia and into living rooms across the country, environmental awareness and a solid track record have helped propel once-niche socially responsible mutual funds into the retail arena.

Most alternative investment products are neither well-understood nor on the shopping lists of affluent investors with $500,000 or more investable assets. Moreover, fewer than one-third discuss including alternative investments in their portfolios with financial advisers.

While exchange-traded funds have yet to offer an actively managed variety, they are creeping in that direction through elaborate indexes, many of them based on quantitative models, Morningstar reports. These quantitative funds use computer models to screen for stocks based on such set criteria as valuation, strength and momentum.

Although hedge funds didn’t deliver stellar returns in 2006, many of them trailing major stock indexes, their assets rose 30% to $2 trillion worldwide, Bloomberg reports, citing a report from HedgeFund Intelligence. Last year, the average hedge fund returned 13%, compared to the S&P 500 Index’s 16% return and the MSCI World Index’s 21% gain.