Fund performance

In an effort to alleviate investor anxiety, fixed-income guru Bill Gross has taken over daily responsibility of four of Pacific Investment Management Co.’s close-end bond funds.

Jay Peroni had been a financial advisor for over seven years when a client asked him a question he could not answer: “Can I expect God to bless my investments if I’m investing in things that oppose his word?”

New York-based American International Group Inc. scored a victory in California Superior Court after a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by a financial planner.

Corporate greed, moral hazard, lax oversight and foolhardy underwriting all contributed to the crisis in finance. Another factor, less useful for sloganeers but no less insidious, was the simple mispricing of risk.

Total assets of money market mutual funds continued their fall with a drop of $51.13 billion in the latest week to $3.269 trillion, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Investors faced whopping losses as a result of the economic recession and the deep scars left by the financial insecurity of the past 18 months had most individuals investing in relatively safe bonds in 2009.

Putnam Investments announced Wednesday that its suite of target Absolute Return Funds has surpassed $1 billion in assets, less than a year after they were launched.

Many target-date retirement funds are still heavily invested in risky, high-yield junk bonds in order to give investors the yields they promise, Bloomberg reports.

WASHINGTON — Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wa., and John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced a bill Wednesday that would repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 by restoring the walls between the banking, securities and insurance industries.

Mutual funds and exchange-traded funds increased asset flows in November, according to a report by Morningstar Inc.

A pension fund has sued Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for its use of bonuses to employees during the first nine months of the year. The lawsuit was filed in state court in New York.

The alternative investment services unit of Bank of New York Mellon is launching a service that will confirm the values of assets that hedge funds hold.

Despite still being down from peak highs two years ago, hedge funds attracted $150 billion in new assets in the first nine months of this year, according to a quarterly report by Barclays Capital's prime services division.

Symetra Life Insurance Company has launched a group variable annuity for the 403(b) and 457 marketplaces, with schools and nonprofits in mind.

Fidelity Investments has helped a record 185 brokers leave wirehouses and join registered investment advisory firms and independent broker-dealers so far in 2009, the company said Monday.

Despite heavy losses in their portfolios, most high-net-worth investors are sticking with their financial advisers, according to the Northstar/Sullivan Rebuilding Investor Trust Survey.

Fund managers are betting that emerging markets will be the best place for growth in 2010, due to their lack of correlation to the rest of the world and its sluggish, forecasted recovery, but lower correlation does not mean greater safety.

American Century Investments is a brand-new player in the international wealth management business-and that novelty could be an ace up its sleeve, according to the company's top executive.

The House of Representatives refused to give rule-making authority over many investment advisory firms to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Morningstar has started publishing credit ratings for about 100 of the largest U.S. companies. Over the next year, it plans to produce credit ratings for up to 1,000 companies currently covered by its equity analyst team. The ratings are available for free for institutional equity research clients at its website.