Special Program Root Tag

Smaller investment firms deliver stronger returns and better downside protection in volatile markets than larger firms when investing in U.S. large-cap stocks, Northern Trust found.

USAA has launched two funds that address inflation and interest rate concerns.

Spectrem Group’s Spectrem Millionaire Investor Confidence Index rose six points in October to zero, a neutral reading and its highest level in nearly three years, and the Spectrem Affluent Investor Confidence Index rose three points to minus 13, a mildly bearish reading.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Connecticut banking commission have sued a Connecticut hedge fund manager with fraud.

Waddell & Reed Financial reported third quarter net income of $40.5 million, or 47 cents per diluted share, up 21% from $33.4 million, or 39 cents per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2009.

The State Street Investor Confidence Index, which measures the actual buying and selling of institutional investors, fell 1.9 points in October to 86.2 from 88.1 the month before. In North America, confidence fell even more, by 3.2 points, to 84.9 from 88.1.

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index increased slightly in October after decreasing a small amount in September. The index now stands at 50.2, up from 48.6 in September.

The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets released its report on Money Market Fund Reform Options, reigniting the controversial debate over floating net asset values, banking regulations such as insurance and a private emergency liquidity facility and meeting redemption requests in kind.

Three Guggenheim Partners Transparent Value Mutual Funds have been added to the Schwab Mutual Fund OneSource service.

TD Ameritrade Tuesday reported that it attracted a record $34 billion in new assets in fiscal 2010 ended Sept. 30, an 11% increase from assets held at the beginning of the year.

Chief compliance officers face increasing responsibilities and feel that they are struggling to keep up with the pressure of regulatory changes, an SEI poll conducted at its CCO Forum finds.

Paladyne Systems, a New York-based technology provider, on Monday officially launched a new turnkey front-to-back office service for start-up hedge funds called Paladyne FastStart.

Russell Investments has launched a new family of equal weight indexes that also manage for sector risk and are easily replicated for investable products. The indexes apply to each of the nine Russell global sectors: consumer discretionary, consumer staples, energy, financial services, healthcare, materials and processing, producer durables, technology and utilities.

The new EU hedge fund passport rule the European Parliament is soon to vote on, will permit all hedge funds, including those in the U.S., to operate throughout all of Europe’s 27 nations—but it would also subject them to the strict compensation rules.

CMG Capital Management Group has selected American Independence Financial Services to managed the tactical fixed income portion of its absolute return managed accounts and Absolute Return Mutual Fund.

BlackRock and SunGard have partnered to offer a seamless retirement income window for defined contribution plan recordkeeping firms.

Fidelity Investments is making its single family offices services available to advisers serving this market as well as ultra-high-net-worth clients with investable assets of $50 million or more.

Assets under management at the 500 largest advisors in the world rose 16% in 2009 to $62 trillion, after contracting 23% the year before, according to Towers Watson and Pensions & Investments.

The entire wealth management industry manages $16.5 trillion in assets, according to the Scorpio Partnership's 2010 Global Private Banking study released this summer. And wealth managers, at the time were kicking themselves because roughly $10 trillion out of a potential $40 trillion of investable assets-the wealth of the world's highest-net-worth people-hadn't been tapped.

Janus Capital has named George S. Batejan as senior vice president, global head of technology and operations, reporting to Janus Chief Executive Officer Dick Weil.