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Over the next five business days through Sept. 6, the Dow Jones Golden Crossover Large-Cap Total Stock Market Index will decrease its equity allocation from 100% to 25%, moving that 75% allocation into the cash equivalent of short-term U.S. Treasury bills.

Fears of another recession could prompt corporate Treasurers and lenders to withhold financing, which in and of itself could raise the probability of less liquidity and further economic weakening.

Morningstar has promoted William Harding to head of manager research for its investment management division, a new position in which Harding will develop best practices in investment manager research and selection.

A bad day for financial engineers in Chicago continued Wednesday, when the Securities and Exchange Commission said the assets of a quantitative trading firm were frozen.

BNY Mellon Asset Management has promoted Christopher Sheldon to chief investment officer of The Dreyfus Corp. Sheldon hails from BNY Mellon Wealth Management, where he was director of investment strategy and president of BNY Mellon Funds.

A trio of finance professors are blasting the big three rating agencies, Moody’s in particular, claiming in a new report that they've unearthed evidence that asset classes that provide the agencies with most of their revenue benefit from better credit ratings while classes that provide less revenue receive harsher treatment.

U.S. stock funds were hit with -$2.6 billion in outflows in the week ended Aug. 24, the Investment Company Institute said. Investors’ skittishness over market volatility again has gotten the best of them, after having invested a net $1.3 billion into U.S. stock funds the week prior.

Global custodian Northern Trust on Tuesday said it has made it easier and faster for fund managers and their pension plan otother clients to view and customize risk analytics and performance metrics through its web portal.

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J.P. Morgan Asset Management has hired James Gearin as chief operating officer of its retirement plan services business, reporting to the unit’s CEO, David Musto.

Invictus Consulting Group has created a bank stress test service for hedge funds that rates the valuation of bank stocks in relation to their peers. It also stress tests banks’ Tier 1 capital reserves two years out. By comparison, banks’ stress tests are handled in house, Invictus noted.

401(k) investors and sponsors are likely to stand up and take notice of the fees that will be clearly presented to them in April, particularly the fact that investors pay most of the administration fees. These administration fees, or expense ratios, cover not just fund management but also recordkeeping, auditing and broker commissions.

Despite their reputation for taking advantage of upsets in the markets, hedge funds wisely ran for the exit from stocks between 2007 and 2009, according to a report by Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business Assistant Professor of Business Itzhak Ben-David. Ben-David conducted the study along with Rabih Moussawi of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Francesco Franzoni of the Swiss Finance Institute and the University of Lugano.

Investors have developed a serious aversion to U.S. equity mutual funds, which is upsetting the balance of fund flows, according to Morningstar.

The correlation between stocks and the S&P 500 has reached a 20-year high of 0.73, up from 0.44 in July—posing a real challenge for individual fund managers, according to Goldman Sachs.

Both the Conference Board and the State Street confidence indexes plummeted in August, with the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index falling 14.7 points from July, to a reading of 44.5, and the State Street Investor Confidence Index declining by 12.9 points, to 89.6.

BlackRock has filed to create proprietary indexes for its iShares exchange-traded funds. The indexes will be "transparent to the public," the exemptive order says, indicating the indexes could be for actively managed ETFs.

Exchange-traded fund assets rose 0.8% in July to $1.086 trillion, up from $1.077 trillion in June, the Investment Company Institute reports. Assets rose 32% from $821 billion a year ago, July 2010.

Standard & Poor's has launched the MILA 40 Index, tracking the largest and most liquid stocks trading on the Mercada Integredo Latino Americano (MILA) platform, the joint venture of the Chile, Columbia and Peru stock exchanges. Stocks in the index must have market caps above U.S. $100 million."Equities from the Andean regions have been among the best-performing in all emerging markets," said Alka Banerjee, VP of global equity indices at S&P Indices. Banerjee called the index "a sound benchmark [for] this important region of the world."

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