T. Rowe Price

New portfolios from BlackRock, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price and Clark Capital underscore the Chicago-based firm's ambitions with independent advisors.

In a panel at the Quad-A conference, executives from the three major firms explained how they view the industry's path forward on diversity.

The new leader will have to focus on actively managed U.S. mutual funds at a time when index-tracking products like exchange-traded funds are attracting increased investment.

While some jobs such as trading are more suited for an office setting, CEO Bill Stromberg says technology and programming roles can be better handled remotely.

As more active strategies embrace the exchange-traded model, the landscape may be shifting.

Vanguard reclaimed its top spot in J.D. Power’s annual ranking of self-directed investor satisfaction. Charles Schwab retained its position as a leader among DIY investors.

With more than $80 billion in combined assets under management, the winners have started out the year with a loss.

The move expands the manager’s commission-free platform, which has included all mutual funds since 1977 and all ETFs since 2010.

The 82-year-old company’s strategy has helped secure net inflows in all but one of the five years through 2018.

The four new types of funds use a so-called proxy basket and will publish some information about their portfolios every day.

Rather than disclosing their portfolios every day like conventional ETFs, the nontransparent products will reveal their holdings at least once a quarter.

The asset managers and a U.S. family office collectively bought a 14.4% position in the company ahead of its IPO, a person familiar with the matter says.

At 84 basis points, the average expense ratio is over 40 basis points pricier than what investors paid on average last year.

When pitted against the broader market, the top 20 outperformed both the Dow and S&P 500 by more than 5 percentage points.

Some of the same features that led to their unpopularity may also be what uncorrelated them from their peers, an expert says.

With double-digit annualized returns produced by nearly all of these funds, the ranking illustrates the broader trend toward passive investing.

The Fed’s pause on interest rate hikes has been a “net positive” for the category, an expert says.

The average fee was nearly 20 basis points higher than the top-performer.

“It’s hard to outrun secular risk,” says T. Rowe Price CIO David Giroux.

There are at least 200 fewer products available since 2015. Some advisors haven’t noticed. But should they?