Fund performance

The Epiphany Fund, which invests according to Catholic principles, can’t exactly boast that it is bucking the trend of most mutual funds going into the red. It’s down 33.5% so far this year.

Reserve Management has scheduled payments on 12 of its funds, at $1 per net asset value, to begin this week and continue through the week of Jan. 12. Investors in seven of the funds will be receiving all of their money back.

PIMCO has frozen dividends yesterday on six municipal bond funds because the value of their investments is insufficient to cover the funds' debt.

Treasury four-week bills that yield zero percent have attracted $30 billion in assets, the Treasury Department announced. And when investors trade the paper with one another, sometimes they get negative yields. This is just further proof of investors’ keen aversion to risk. Treasury first issued the notes in 2001.

Fund bonuses will, undoubtedly, be far lower this year, and with that, a number of managers could look to jump ship, Investment News reports.

Moody’s Investors Service has affirmed the long-term A1 senior unsecured debt rating for FMR, parent company of Fidelity Investments. Moody’s said that the broad offerings of FMR—including mutual funds, particularly fixed income and money market funds; brokerage services; and benefits administration—and its strong leadership position in each of these industries, should help it weather the economic meltdown.

Hedge funds returned negative -2.7% in November, bringing their year-to-date decline to 18%, according to the Hennessee Hedge Fund Index, The Wall Street Journal reports. While the decline is painful, it is at least less than the -5.5% loss in October and the double-digit declines in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, the Dow Jones Industrial Index and the Nasdaq.

Citing steep redemptions and continued market declines, Fidelity Investments Chairman Ned Johnson indicated the firm’s 7% layoffs, or loss of 3,000 jobs, could surge if conditions worsen, the Boston Herald reports.

Personal financial columns are beginning to warn investors that fund fees could rise in 2009, as mutual fund companies try to grapple with fewer assets under management.

Despite some doomsayers predicting the Dow Jones Industrial Average could fall to 7,000 or lower, most of the speakers at the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit said that the market has probably hit bottom. That said, they don’t see volatility going away anytime soon.

Buttressed by favorable interest rates and investors looking for shelter from falling equity prices, U.S. fixed annuity sales set a new quarterly record. Total U.S. sales of fixed annuities rose to an estimated $27.1 billion for the third quarter, according to a Beacon Research study of 51 insurance companies representing 87% of the market. Sales were up 54% from last year's third quarter, and up 10% from the previous quarter, marking the highest sales since the study began in 2003.

The unprecedented financial crisis of 2008 has redefined everyone's perception of risk, sending private wealth managers back to the drawing board to make sure clients really understand how risky complicated products can be.

NEW YORK - "There is so much stimulus in the economy. The punchbowls are at the party, they're spiked-but no one is drinking yet." That was the apt summary of the current economic and investment picture by Rodney Olea, manager of the AHA Limited Maturity Fixed Income Fund, speaking at SunStar's press briefing for Lipper Leaders here last week.

Everywhere you look these days, people are talking about green cars, green energy, greenhouse gases and even green mutual funds. This new demand for all things green is enough to make some money managers green with envy.

Faced with economic difficulties, almost one out of every five, or 18%, of Americans are dipping into their 401(k) savings, Bank of America found in its annual Retirement Savings Survey.

Reserve Funds has added insult to injury, literally, to the investors in its Primary Fund. The fund, which broke the buck on Sept. 16 and has been struggling to return investors’ assets ever since, is now valuing the remaining balance at 98.5 cents per share.

Investors continued to rush to the safety of cash this week, putting an additional $29.06 billion in money market mutual funds, for a total of $3.743 trillion, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Seeing traffic on Yahoo’s finance website and Marketwatch.com burgeon, Fidelity Investments has decided to try its hand at financial news for itself, and is revamping its website as a result.

Confidence among affluent and millionaire investors sunk further in November, according to Spectrem Group.The Spectrem Millionaire Investor Index fell 15 points in November, to an all-time low of 39.

For all of the reports on dismal negative 20% declines in hedge funds this year, PerTrac Financial Solutions found that if the net is cast wider, sound performers can, indeed, be found.