Special Program Root Tag

Technology funds are up 36% year-to-date through last Tuesday, making them the best-performing equity category so far this year, according to Lipper. That’s great news, but it has some fund managers worrying that investors might think happy days are here again, Reuters reports. And according to Money magazine, some investors are again flocking to unprofitable technology firms.

Lockwood Advisors, a subsidiary of the Bank of New York, has partnered with BNY Capital to allow financial advisers to construct municipal bond portfolios for their clients. Through BNY’s trading desk, advisers can now structure passive portfolios of high-quality municipal bonds of varying maturities. The new offering is part of a recent campaign by Lockwood to broaden beyond separately managed accounts with such offerings as a registered hedge fund, a mutual fund supermarket and wrap program and a mortgage origination program.

Details are scarce about what exactly went wrong when MetLife’s securities arm, New England Securities Corp., failed to rebalance asset allocations for 6,000 mutual fund accounts according to their risk profiles. The company estimates that some $3 million to $11 million evaporated from those accounts as a result – losses it plans to repay.

Van Eck Funds is planning on removing class B shares on its Global Hard Asset Fund, a filing published with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday revealed. The fund will no longer offer the shares beginning Sept. 3. Beginning Oct. 31, all shareholders with class B shares will find those shares coverted to class C. Shareholders will no longer be subject to the contingent deferred sales charge but to a contingent deferred redemption fee of 1% for one year after purchase of any class C share.

Fifty-five percent of employees who enrolled in employee benefits in 2002 chose to do so over the Web, according to a survey by Belelogic, an online provider of employee benefits. And nearly all of these enrollment systems were done on outside, non-corporate Websites.

William Galvin, secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, would like federal regulators to regulate hedge funds and to preclude retail investors from participating in hedge funds or registered hedge funds-of-funds, Reuters reports.

The Democratic National Committee will soon be sending rent checks to Fidelity Investments, Reuters reports. The committee has signed a lease to rent 50,000 square feet of downtown Boston office space owned by the fund giant.

More politics. California governor candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger may have gotten more than he bargained for by tapping Warren Buffet to lead his inner circle of financial advisers, The New York Post reports.

Equity funds took in a net $21 billion in July, Lipper reported Wednesday. It was among the top 10 best months for equity funds in the past five years, Lipper said.

Revenues for the nation’s asset management industry fell 4.8% and operating profits fell 7.9% last year, according to CRA Business Strategies Group. Total assets fell 6.5%, according to the company’s annual report, Competitive Challenges.

Real estate may have been a hot investment last year, but not for real estate investment trusts.

FleetBoston Financial has hired Tracey Esherick to be a managing director for the banking and investing products group in Fleet’s personal financial services business.

Most insurance company CFOs consider distribution to be a key business issue, according to a survey by Tillinghast-Towers Perrin. Out of the 30 respondents, 87% thought distribution of high importance, and nearly a quarter cited it as the top concern.

E*Trade’s decision to rebate back to customers half of the 12b-1 fees it receives from funds could very well boost its account base, TheStreet.com reports. It could also inspire other online discount brokers to cut their fees.

Biotechnology, a specialty sector that lost favor along with technology funds, appears to be making a comeback, judging from a very strong offering by two private-equity biotechnology funds, Reuters reports.

Most fund managers believe equities are fairly valued and 85% think the economy will improve over the next 12 months, Merrill Lynch’s monthly survey of fund managers shows. Their cash positions this month remain at the same levels from the month before, 4% of assets, and many are moving into general industrial and energy stocks.

401kExchange has ranked Standard Insurance Co. of Portland, Ore., the No. 1 fund manager nationally for companies with $1 million to $10 million of 401(k) plan assets. In the same asset range, 401kExchange also ranked Standard the top plan administrator.

OFI Private Investments, a subsidiary of OppenheimerFunds, has selected CheckFree Corp.’s separately managed accounts Web application, M-Pact. The open-architecture software handles proposals, sales and investment management and is compatible with the numerous platforms that broker/dealers and registered investment advisors use to sell separately managed accounts. In addition, clients can private label services through M-Pact. Oppenheimer had already been using CheckFree’s APL, its trading and portfolio management tool.

The Northeast blackout caused cooling problems in the computer systems at the American Stock Exchange that prevented it from reopening until 3:45 p.m. Friday, Dow Jones Reports. As a result, Barclays Global Investors – which with 78 exchange-traded funds on the exchange is one of the biggest sponsors of ETFs – saw its trading volume at only one-quarter capacity. With the delay giving the exchange less than one-half hour for trading Friday (the exchange closes at 4:10 p.m.) Barclays was able to achieve even one-quarter its usual trading volume by using alternative trading systems, like electronic crossing networks (ECNs). Forty-eight of Barclays’ ETFs trade on ECNs.

The three-year bear market and unemployment have caused investors to be less concerned with growing their portfolio than merely protecting their assets, a John Hancock Financial survey shows. And this focus is likely to continue for some time to come.