Money Management Executive Latest News

Mutual fund investors paid lower fees for equity funds in 2010, based on asset-weighted average ratios, the Investment Company Institute said Thursday.

Lipper announced the winners of the United States Lipper Fund Awards 2011 Wednesday evening.

Direxion and Minyanville Media have jointly launched an educational advertising campaign on Minyanville.com to teach investors about leveraged exchange-traded funds. The campaign consists of five animated, lighthearted vignettes featuring Minyanville characters “Hoofy” the bull and “Boo” the bear.

While corporations, consumers and governments are trying to get back on their feet following the global recession, continued volatility is pushing investors, especially high-net-worth investors, to pour their money into alternatives, which allow for broader diversification, said Gurinder Ahluwalia, president of Genworth Financial Wealth Management, at a media roundtable on diversification and new asset classes in New York.

Long-term funds took in $4.68 billion in the week ended March 16, the Investment Company Institute said Wednesday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking industry comment on a proposal to require broker-dealers to follow the same rules as transfer agents when it comes to finding so-called “lost shareholders.”

American workers exited 2010 with more than $10.2 trillion invested in employer-sponsored retirement plans, up 10% from the $9.3 trillion in play at the close of 2009, according to a new report from Chicago-based affluent investor consultant Spectrem Group.The beefed-up portfolios is just the latest sign that investors are finally starting to regain confidence in the market and, perhaps more important, making a concerted effort to stash away assets for their golden years.

Last week’s stock market decline may be the low from which the market will rebound from, according to BlackRock’s Chief Equity Etrategist Bob Doll.

ProShares has launched an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that will provide investors inverse exposure to the high yield bond market‹a first for the market, the Bethesda, Md.-based ETF manager said in a statement today.

Direxion has launched three single-inverse fixed income exchange-traded funds to permit investors to wager on decreases in interest rates. They are the Total Bond Market Bear 1x Shares, the Daily 7-10 Year Treasury Bear 1x Shares and the Daily 20+ Year Treasury Bear 1x Shares ETFs. They seek 100% of the inverse of the daily performance of, respectively, the Barclays Capital U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, NYSE 7-10 Year Treasury Bond Index and NYSE 20-Year Plus Treasury Bond Index.