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Two leading confidence gauges were released on Tuesday. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index rose to 52.9 in December, from an upwardly revised 50.6 in November.

Goldman Sachs has filed with the SEC to offer its first line of exchange-traded funds, running the gamut from equity to fixed income to balanced. According to one report, the inaugural fund will concentrate on the top 85% of companies in the emerging markets of India, Korea, Brazil and China.

With the Putnam Voyager Fund up 65.6% in 2009, ranking in the top 2% of large-cap growth funds, The Boston Globe has named manager Nick Thakore Boston Capital Fund Manager of the Year. The fund has handily outpaced its benchmark Russell 1000 Growth Index, up 39.3%, by more than 26 percentage points.

Americans are divided on their outlook for the economy in 2010, with 32% thinking the status quo will prevail, 28% expecting things to get worse, and 29% hoping for improvement, according to a survey by Country Financial.

When mutual fund investors receive their year-end statements, most will be uplifted by the fact that the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index is up 24.9% for the year through Dec. 24, according to Lipper data.

Tiger Woods’ approval rating may sink even lower than its current 40%, once stock and mutual fund investors in companies he endorses realize they have lost $12 billion since his extramarital scandal broke, according to estimates by researchers at the University of California, Davis.

Advisor Software Inc. of Lafayette, Calif., has bought Advisor Partners LLC, to expand its offerings to registered investment advisers and organizations.

Van Eck Global has used municipal bond exchange-traded funds to make a name for itself in the tax-exempt investment arena, and the firm sees more growth ahead.

At least one upside to the financial crisis is that it has most likely turned people between the ages of 18 and 25 into lifelong savers, much as it impacted young people who lived during the Great Depression, according to a report by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Investors are returning to hedge funds, but in a small way, with managers attracting smaller pools of cash and making more concessions to investors.

Fidelity investors can now electronically transfer funds from their bank accounts to the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, making this the first national donor-advised fund program to make e-transfers possible.

The House Ways and Means Committee has introduced a bill that would streamline and modernize the tax code for mutual funds and their shareholders. For the past 50 years, the code has been adjusted piecemeal, and an entire review of the rules hasn’t occurred for more than 20 years.

State Street Corp. has agreed with Intesa Sanpaolo, a Milan banking company, to buy its securities services business for $1.87 billion in cash.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. has announced the purchase of Portsmouth Financial Systems, a developer of modeling and analytics for structured credit transactions, so that it can give clients and investors more transparency in structured credit portfolios.

While emerging markets were only recently seen as an exotic investment, their promise for high returns, growing stability and increasingly influential impact on the rest of the globe has caused mutual fund and pension managers to reassess their importance, The Wall Street Journal reports in a story titled: “A Bigger Risk Than Emerging Markets: Staying Out.”

Mutual funds took in net sales for the 40th week in a row, bringing the sales streak to a full 10 months totaling $400 billion, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Besides being one of the most famous and successful fund managers in the history of the mutual fund business, Bill Gross reached another historic milestone on Dec. 17, when the PIMCO Total Return Fund he runs topped $202.5 billion in assets—making it the biggest mutual fund ever.

Regardless of the fact that some of the biggest large-cap mutual funds lost an average of 40% in 2008, the asset managers running them took home hundreds of millions of dollars in fees apiece for each of the funds alone, Morningstar found through an analysis of fiscal year-end data.

Fidelity Investments has expanded the investment options on its Advisors 401(k) platform, in an effort to help its advisors boost their share of the advisor-sold market.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday that it has proposed amendments to Rule 163 under the Securities Act to facilitate the ability of certain large companies to communicate with broader groups of potential investors, and gauge the level of interest in the market for their securities offerings.