Fund performance

The industry saw Van Eck Global sponsoring a $3M student fund and scholarship at the USC Marshall School of Business, the flagship liquid alt fund offered by IndexIQ passing the $1 billion assets mark, a survey of 235 hedge fund professionals expressing positive sentiment, and Morningstar naming its fund managers of the year.

The push to make money-market funds safer means the biggest U.S. banks will pay more to borrow while America’s near record-low financing costs go even lower.

Holdings in ETPs backed by silver fell 0.3% last month, after declining 3% in December, while gold holdings jumped 4.1% in January. Retail investors account for 80% of U.S. purchases.

Pimco’s biggest mutual fund suffered about $11.6 billion in withdrawals in January, the 21st straight month of redemptions at the investment fund created and formerly run by bond manager Bill Gross.

The ongoing, rapid growth of ETFs begs a question: is it sustainable, or will the market soon find itself in a bubble? A new global report on the ETF industry says there is little to stop its momentum.

DoubleLine Capital, the bond firm co-founded by Jeffrey Gundlach, attracted its biggest monthly subscriptions ever last month after beating peers in 2014.

The big leadership issues facing executives in the asset management industry have multiplied in just a year, one reason why attendees at the upcoming NICSA Strategic Leadership Forum in Hollywood, Fla., might be hard-pressed to agree on a common concern.

Franklin Resources, manager of the Franklin and Templeton mutual funds, said fiscal first-quarter profit fell 6.2% as investors pulled money from the firm’s best-known global bond funds.

Invesco said fourth-quarter profit rose 5.6% as client assets increased.

The bond market's main concern is the ballooning ETF industry and how it has shaken up the traditional way to buy and sell debt.

Buy an index fund and let the bull market guide you to a 44% gain. Most money managers who actually pick stocks couldn't match the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, let alone beat it. Thanks to three weeks of volatility, that’s beginning to change.

Deborah Fuhr, a veteran ETF industry observer, says the explosive growth of ETFs is vindication for a product once dismissed by some investment professionals. In a discussion with Money Management Executive, Fuhr outlines factors that have led to the market's enthusiastic acceptance of ETFs.

BlackRock’s chief executive officer has warned the retreat of banks as counterparties in credit will create severe volatility. Regulators are preparing new rules for mutual funds to ensure that a sudden stampede out of funds won’t result in a downward price spiral that threatens the financial system.

The industry in 2014 saw Pimco bleed billions after the abrupt departure of Bill Gross in September, while BlackRock reaped the benefits of that disarray. BlackRock's iShares ETFs captured $102.8 billion in investments in 2014. Also, Vanguard announced it would offer its first ETF focused on the $3.6 trillion U.S. municipal bond market, and a Cerulli study detailed the state of the annuities market.

Pimco will fight a lawsuit by a shareholder of its Total Return Fund alleging the company gouges investors with excessive advisory fees to support billion-dollar bonuses for top executives.

As additional regulations are anticipated this year, the industry is beginning to aggressively seek to defragment the technology, data and services most critical to improving business performance and reducing operational and reputational risk.

Dimensional is among a small group of managers toppling the dominance of firms such as Fidelity Investments and Capital Group, which have built their reputations on picking individual stocks. Among the fastest-growing U.S. mutual fund firms after assets surged almost six-fold in the past decade, Dimensional attracted almost $28 billion in new money in 2014.

At the SourceMedia MDM & Data Governance Summit in New York, TIAA-CREF, along with Princeton, N.J.,-based Global IDs, a technology firm that provides companies methods to manage their information, discussed the challenges of the big data problem and finding answers.

The final two months of 2014 made the year for some managers who were able to navigate plunging oil prices, surging stock-market volatility and a rising dollar, catapulting these firms to returns of 20% or more.

Four ETP launches in 2014 crossed the $250 million asset milestone before the end of the year, while five ETPs launched in 2014 were closed before the end of the year.