Special Program Root Tag

A wealth management firm has identified a growing niche serving clients in the United States and north of the border.

The sell-off in municipal bonds finally appeared to sap some retail demand for state and local government debt last week as muni mutual funds reported taking in the paltriest amount of new money in six weeks.Municipal bond mutual funds that report their figures weekly posted a net inflow of $638.2 million during the week ended Sept. 15, according to Lipper FMI, the lightest inflow since early August.

Investors are highly unlikely to turn into the “lost generation” following the Great Depression, Charles Rotblut, vice president with the American Association of Individual Investors, tells the San Francisco Chronicle. Certainly, it is remarkable that investors have pulled $175 billion from U.S. stock funds and placed $496 billion into bond funds since the financial crisis started in September 2008.

PIMCO co-Chief Investment Officer Bill Gross is said to be planning to one-up himself on touting Canadian companies as good fixed income opportunities; he is planning a big expansion into Canada.

The Securities and Exchange Commission approved the expansion of its post-Flash Crash circuit breaker program to include all stocks in the Russell 1000 Index and a test group of exchange-traded funds.

David Corkins, a star manager at Janus who sucessfully ran the Janus Mercury and Janus Growth & Income funds and executed an impressive turnaround on the flagship $12 billion Janus Fund, started hedge fund Arrowpoint Partners in 2009 - delivering returns of 33%.

Advertisements and marketing by fund companies are either all or nothing: They terrorize investors - or pacify them.

Morgan Stanley has named Paul Price head of the firm's investment management international sales.

Fund managers may soon be faced to make a tough choice if they want to reduce operating risk and cost.

Life used to be so simple.

Income in retirement is becoming an issue politicians on both sides of the aisle can't afford to ignore, according to a survey by Lake Research Partners and Public Opinion Strategies.

Microsoft plans to discuss its four-month-old effort to apply "pervasive, accurate, real-time modeling" to the massive computing needs of Wall Street Monday.

savings-rate-goes-to-10-percent

Fearful of how a change in ratings will help them market their funds among investors, money fund managers are chafing at the idea of Moody’s’ proposed new ratings. Investors are used to looking for AAA-rated money market funds, and it will take some time for them to get to a scale ranging from MF1 to MF4, money managers tell The Wall Street Journal.

WASHINGTON — Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus on Thursday proposed to extend the Build America Bonds program for only one year in legislation he unveiled that would extend several expiring or expired bond and tax provisions.

Exchange-traded funds will continue on a strong, albeit somewhat scaled back, growth track, expanding assets by an average of 19% a year over the next five years through 2014, according to Financial Research Corp. Over the last five years, the annual growth rate has been 23%.

Margins of asset management firms have declined significantly in the past 10 years, according to a report from kasina. In 2000, operating margins stood at 39%. Today, they are 29%. And net margins, 27% 10 years ago, are now 20%.

Despite the new rules that the SEC imposed on money market funds in January – or perhaps because of them – managers are challenged to find an adequate supply of investments. The scarcity of debt with a maturity of less than seven days, combined with low yields, is pushing money market fund managers into areas of the fixed income and cash management markets they previously would not seek out, The Wall Street Journal reports this morning.

At 91%, the overwhelming majority of retail investors support a fiduciary standard for all financial advisers, according to a survey of 1,319 investors by Infogroup/ORC.

Establishing a presence in China is slow going, but Northern Trust Corp., which recently won approval for a Beijing branch office, believes the payoff will be worth the wait.