Fund performance

Mutual fund investors overcame gloomy indices in July and put a lot of money into domestic and overseas equity mutual funds, giving them record gains by several measures, according to Lipper’s Fund Flows Insight Report released on Wednesday.

Fidelity Investments said its assets under management have grown 9% since the end of 2008 to $1.4 trillion and that combining assets administered, it oversees $2.8 trillion, up 9% in that time.

High-yield bond funds have returned an outstanding 33% year-to-date and attracted $14.6 billion in assets, TheStreet.com reports. And for the 10 years through the end of July, high-yield bonds gained 2.9% annually, compared with the 2.2% loss in the S&P 500 Index.

Mutual funds that focus on a select sector or small number of stocks are outperforming more broadly based portfolios, The Wall Street Journal reports. These funds rely on in-depth research to invest in only a couple dozen of stocks, rather than the average 172. Thus, they are riskier—but have the potential for outsized returns.

Affiliated Computer Services has joined the growing list of service providers offering 401(k) analytic tools for plan sponsors.

Actively Managed Funds Up 15.82%, Beating S&P by Five Percentage Points

Hedge funds delivered an average of 2.5% in July and are up 9.9% year-to-date, the best performance in 11 years, according to the Credit Suisse/Tremont Hedge Fund Index.

With mortgage-backed securities regaining value, PIMCO’s benchmark $169 billion Total Return Fund has been trimming its exposure to this sector, Dow Jones reports. The fund’s holdings of mortgage-backed securities fell to 47% in July, only slightly more than its 42% exposure in April 2007, and down considerably from a peak of 86% in February.

Money market mutual fund assets fell $12.83 billion in the week ended Aug. 12, with the bulk of the redemptions coming from retail investors, the Investment Company Institute said.

As employers regain confidence, they plan to lift freezes on salaries, benefits and 401(k) matches, according to a series of reports.

The average 401(k) account balance rose 13.5% in the second quarter to $53,900, which was perhaps behind the trend for more investors to increase their deferral savings rate than to decrease it, Fidelity Investments reports.

In order to survive this marathon recession, experts say fund companies will need lean cost management operations with the stamina to endure prolonged, stagnant growth.

Now that the global economy appears to be on the road to recovery, investors are gradually beginning to step off the sidelines and take on more risk, as markedly proven by fund flows. Money market fund assets surged to $3.9 trillion in March, but have since fallen back to $3.6 trillion. Meanwhile, investors steadily withdrew $259 billion from equity funds between June 2008 and March, but in the past four months, they have since have moved $50 billion back in.

The average return of U.S. equity mutual funds in the second quarter, a stunning 19.77%, was certainly welcome news, but it gave investors absolutely no reason to believe the stock market was turning around. After all, what fundamentals were there?

Hedge funds continue to do well, rising 2.4% in July, bringing year-to-date returns to nearly 12%, according to HedgeFund.net. In fact, it’s the best first seven months of the year for hedge funds in a decade.

Alternative assets under management fell 37.25% from a year earlier, to $2.496 trillion as of March 31, according to a survey.

Many mutual funds geared toward a special type of socially responsible investing, green investing, are outpacing the Dow and the S&P 500, BusinessWeek reports. And given the environmentally conscious and alternative energy initiatives of the new president, valued at more than $80 billion, they could continue to outpace the general markets.

Bond funds attracted seven times the amount of money than stock funds in the three weeks between July 1 and July 22, despite the impressive 9.9% rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average—signaling very different investor behavior than previous rallies, USA Today reports. As the paper puts it, “The stock market may be roaring, but mutual fund investors are snoring.”

The recent drop in financial markets has rekindled the demand for safer, conservative financial products like stable-value funds.

Sometimes we seek out opportunities for change. Other times change is thrust upon us. Market conditions in the past 24 months have produced seismic shifts in the mutual fund industry, and several business drivers have emerged that will shape our industry's future. As asset managers, distributors, suppliers and others evaluate their next steps, these demands will drive strategies and shape new solutions.