Money Management Executive Latest News

Fidelity Institutional Names Dell'Orfano Head of Sales, Relationship Management

Investors continue to stuff municipal bond mutual funds with cash, supporting bond prices even as by some measures they are nearly as expensive as they have ever been.

While sales of variable annuities declined 18% to $127 billion last year, guaranteed living benefits remained popular, with 84% of policyholders electing to buy those riders in the fourth quarter, according to LIMRA.

9% of Finance Execs Planning to Hire Soon

Direxion has launched six new long and short exchange-traded funds tracking BRIC, India and the semiconductor industry, bringing the total number of leveraged ETFs it offers to 34.

This recovery is for real, according to TrimTabs. As cause for the optimism, the research firm points to a 3% increase in wages and salaries from a year ago and a 9% spike in online job postings. Year-to-date, job postings have surged a surprising 18%.

Canadian investors are missing out of up to $500 million a year in yields by sticking with money market funds rather than higher-yielding, insured premium savings accounts, according to a 21-page report from Fair Canada (Foundation for Advancement of Investor Rights).

JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced in a pair of filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it plans to introduce a pair of exchange-traded funds.

Advent Software has acquired Norwegian software provider Goya AS. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Through this acquisition, Advent now offers the product Tradex, which is complementary to Advent’s existing products and is already implemented at a significant number of Advent clients in Europe and the Middle East.

Fidelity announced that new contracts for its integrated benefits services brought the number of Fortune 100 companies it serves to 46 in the fourth quarter. Expected strong momentum into 2010 should result in 300,000 workers at Fortune 100 companies being added to the platform, Fidelity said.