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Although oil prices are nearing record highs, mutual fund managers appear confident that they will go even higher as the summer driving season approaches.

Index-oriented ProFund Advisors has added four new international equity funds.

Rydex Investments will rename 18 of its index funds to more accurately reflect their underlying benchmark or sector and investment objective, Reuters reports.

Wells Fargo Advantage Funds' assets have been growing in recent years, to $111 billion, and the company has every intention of keeping its momentum, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

Vanguard Group has closed its largest fund, the Vanguard Strategic Equity Fund, to new investors and raised the minimum investment rate on two others.

A bill pending in the U.S. House of Representatives that would allow fund companies to offer investment advice to 401(k) participants poses more problems than solutions for investors, according to MarketWatch columnist Thomas Kostigen.

Lipper has launched new lifestyle, lifecycle and hedge fund categories, to be able to more effectively compare peer groups.

NEW YORK - The hoopla about hedge funds stems from regulators' basic distrust of the industry managers, according to Paul N. Roth, a lead attorney with Schulte Roth & Zabel in New York.

Saying it wants to focus more closely on its institutional business, ABN AMRO announced late last week that it would sell the retail division of U.S. mutual fund business to Denver-based Highbury Financial for $38.6 million.

Stocks of small-cap companies may have a much higher potential for return than the large-cap companies that analysts traditionally cover, according to HedgeWorld News.

Morningstar Asia has recognized Steve Lear, head of Schroders' New York-based team, as 2005 manager of the year.

CitiStreet and Smith Barney have joined forces and will be offering a Self-Directed Retirement Account 401(k) product that will give employees more investment options and will even offer them advisory services. The product will also take care of payroll deduction processing.

Despite common belief, Diego Marynberg, the manager of a Latin American fund with the best performance this year, believes that there is investment opportunity in Venezuela, according to Bloomberg News.

Vanguard has launched a new Vanguard Strategic Small-Cap Equity Fund, and has announced that the subscription period for the fund began yesterday.

Website http://www.personalfund.com offers a calculator that can tell investors how much they are paying in total fund expenses--inclusive of turnover costs and a fund's internal capital gains taxes--and it can even calculate how much of the fund's expenses will cut out of their future gains.

Andy Williams, a Merrill Lynch regional manager who has been with the firm for 24 years, has been accused of participating in a scandal involving questionable trading in mutual funds, and has been removed from his position in Northern New Jersey, according to a Dow Jones report.

The taxman is expected to dig deeper into the pockets of mutual fund investors in the coming years, according to new data from Lipper of New York, a development that's sure spur interest in tax-deferred savings vehicles.

To give investors more options for their investments, North Carolina's 529 college savings plan has partnered with The Vanguard Group and Upromise Investments, according to The News & Observer.

Starting May 1, Barclays Global Investors plans to cut fees on certain exchange-traded funds, according to a Dow Jones report.

Because of the fact that corporate and public pension plans have begun to place their money into hedge funds, these loosely regulated investment pools have become a little less risky, a Treasury Department official said, Reuters reports.