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PHOENIX - If there's a single, unqualified maxim in mutual fund industry, it's that performance, above all else, sells. But to what extent it keeps on selling has emerged as a topic of some debate, and that discussion, in turn, reveals some surprising factors that motivate investor behavior and inhibit economies of scale.

Mutual fund websites as a whole are well designed with solid content, according to the "Internet Standards Assessment Report" released by the Web Marketing Association of Boston. The report was based on an assessment by 200 judges of more than 2,300 websites of companies across 85 industries.

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Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said complying with Sarbanes-Oxley has prompted a number of U.S. firms going public to float their stock on overseas markets, the Financial Times reports. As a result, he predicts U.S. regulators will end up making changes to the regulations.

The industry's first crude oil exchange-traded fund has taken heat recently for allegedly being inappropriate for the average investor, and now the ETF community is firing back.

Investors should consider placing their money into emerging markets because they have strong economic ground rules and because they are great for diversifying portfolios, according to News Today.

Recent performance suggests that good things do, in fact, come in small-cap packages, leading to a run on small-stock-focused exchange-traded funds, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal.

The plan was far reaching, but the work was done from one place.

The Schwab 1000 Index Fund is celebrating 15 years without taxable capital gains distributions. It is the only fund of its age to be included in Morningstar's large-cap index category with such a record.

Mutual fund companies are waiting in rapt anticipation of finding out how long they will have respite from the independent chairman rule, which a Federal appeals court has sent back to the Securities and Exchange Commission for a 90-day review, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Leonard A. Reinhart, president of Lockwood, a service of Pershing LLC, has been selected as the new chairman of the Money Management Institute - the national organization for the separately managed accounts solutions industry. He will be replacing Mark Pennington, who is becoming chairman emeritus.

New York-based Rydex Investments announces this week that the Internal Revenue Service has cleared the company to use commodities-linked structured notes in its Rydex Commodities Fund through a private letter ruling.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed charges against Eugene Plotkin, a research analyst in the fixed income division of Goldman Sachs, and David Pajcin, a former employee of Goldman Sachs, for arranging an international insider-trading ring with personnel from both Goldman and Merrill Lynch.

Rising demand, fewer seats and steadily increasing fares have made the beleaguered airline industry attractive once again to investors, including mutual fund giant Fidelity, Bloomberg reports.

The American Stock Exchange has launched the very first ever oil exchange traded fund, which designed to track the price of oil. It began trading Monday at $68.25, according to TheStreet.com. Victoria Bay Asset Management will manage the United States Oil Fund.

Many investors do not realize that fund fees are important when making investment decisions, and instead are swayed by prospectus information even though they sense they are making a mistake, according to the Yale School of Management.

A recent AOL instant message survey shows that 80% of those polled between the ages of 22 and 34 and 65% between the ages of 35 and 54 use instant messaging as a source of communication throughout their daily lives. A workplace survey reveals that 28% of live chatters actually use instant messaging as a tool for communicating with clients. However, less than 20% of the online brokerage firms that Corporate Insight follows utilize live chat for brokerage-related servicing.

Congress will most likely make the Federal tax benefits permanent for 529 college savings plans, Dow Jones Newswires reports.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has named Andrew "Buddy" Donohue, Merrill Lynch's global general counsel, as the director of its division of investment management, a position that has been filled by two interim managers since Paul Roye's departure in February 2005.

With about 200 different exchange-traded funds on the market today, their popularity hardly ranks as breaking news. But in what would stand as the most recent in a growing spate criticism against ETFs, The Chicago Tribune suggests that they're not for everyone and that old-fashioned index funds, which arguably occupy the opposite end of the investing spectrum, are the better bet.