Money Management Executive Latest News

Brokerage firms may soon be able to offer their clients interactive "investment analysis tools," thanks to a proposal from the NASD to roll back its long-standing policy forbidding the use of such products.

If you're a fund manager or stockbroker in times like these, it helps to have a computer doing the thinking for you. Artificial intelligence technology, which has been used to predict markets and pick stocks for more than 15 years but still is not widespread, can insulate those managing millions from the emotional torment that can be inflicted by corporate scandals hacking at the stock market.

For the most part, mutual fund companies were able to recover quickly from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

When former President Bill Clinton signed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act in April 2000, there was wide speculation that e-signatures would transform not just financial services but e-commerce as well.

After several years of spending sprees and then drastic cuts, Web development budgets at fund companies may be finally finding a happy medium.

While start-to-finish e-signature vendors are few and far between, there are movements afoot to offer such a solution. Last year Zions Bancorp, which offers brokerage and insurance services, bought three technology companies for $50 million - think XML, icomXPpress and E-Lock Technologies - and folded them into a new entity, Lexgin.

The usefulness of online Web sites geared to intermediaries has long been a matter for debate. E-business strategy consultant kasina of New York conducted a study recently, finding that financial-services professionals still find the medium useful for sharing information. Nonetheless, there is still a lot of work to be done on the Web.

Mutual fund companies are working to develop more personalized Internet relationships with advisers by targeting relevant information, reducing clutter and personalizing, a new survey shows.

For all the talk of technology's benefits, there's surprisingly little dialogue on the specifics of making it work. Everything you read and hear says: "Build a Web site." "Implement a contact management system." Or: "Publish an e-mail newsletter." But rarely are you given details on how to do it.

Masters of the new universe, they were. Wunderkinds. Almost as single-handedly responsible for the dot-com dizziness as the highly polished Mary Meeker and Henry Blodget and those flamboyant 20-something-year-olds at Kozmo.com, pets.com and boo.com, many managers of what were some of the most high-profile Internet funds are, today, amazingly still sticking to their guns.