Fund performance

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wants to beef up hedge fund regulation as part of his plan for a systemic risk regulator, he said Thursday.

Americans’ consumer attitudes and behaviors have shifted dramatically in the past six months, according to an October study by AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company.

Reserve Funds has entered into an agreement with the U.S. Treasury’s Temporary Guarantee Agreement Program for Money Market Funds, whereby the Treasury will purchase any outstanding securities in the Reserve U.S. Government Fund not sold by January 3.

Investors withdrew $40 billion of assets from hedge funds in October, Dow Jones reports. Coupled with a $115 billion decline in holdings during the month, the $155 billion hit was the worst one-month decline in assets on record with Hedge Fund Research. By comparison, hedge funds lost $210 billion in the third quarter.

Reserve Funds has hired Joseph T. Monagle, Jr. to help the firm sell positions in a difficult debt and credit market.

Because it takes about six months to a year for executive search firms to catch up with the general labor market, a number of recruiters that specialize in financial services are likely to cut their staffs early next year, Dow Jones reports.

While it’s true that many hedge fund investors are planning to redeem billions of dollars, the danger of those redemptions further roiling the markets is low, HedgeWorld News reports.

Hoping to capitalize on the continued popularity of exchange-traded funds even as the markets continue to tank, Barclays Global Investors has introduced a suite of target-date ETFs for 401(k)s.

Stressing that the reorganization is not motivated by the financial crisis but a strong desire to improve accountability and, with that, performance, Putnam Chief Executive Officer Robert Reynolds announced Monday that the firm is doing away with team-managed equity mutual funds. Instead, those funds will be run by single portfolio managers.

A record $156.5 billion was withdrawn from mutual funds in Europe, according to the Lipper FMI report. All asset classes suffered net withdrawals.

Testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last Thursday on the role of hedge funds in the credit crisis, five prominent hedge fund executives said they would be in favor of establishing a public exchange or clearinghouse for credit default swaps (CDS) to make the market more transparent.

LAS VEGAS - Lately, fund marketing and technology executives feel as if they have been bombarded with a barrage of data from their customer relationship management (CRM) systems, but their biggest challenge is finding quick, easy and cheap ways to access that data and make it relevant.

With investors moving so much money into cash and cash-equivalent instruments to avoid the continually downward spiraling stock market, it has never been more important in the history of modern investing for mutual fund companies to reach advisers and investors with forceful yet honest messages about the value of long-term investing and areas of the market that are safe, outpacing benchmarks or, perchance, even delivering positive returns.

LAS VEGAS - A recession may seem like an odd time for a renaissance in technology, but the need to cost-effectively share information and brainstorm for solutions has never been greater.

The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets is looking at ways to better understand and regulate derivatives and credit default swaps, which essentially are insurance on corporate debt.

Assets in U.S. money market mutual funds rose by $21.28 billion in the week ended Nov. 12, for a total of $3.637 trillion, the Investment Company Institute said.

“There will be profound changes in the way investors look at the world going forward,” Vanguard CEO Bill McNabb told Reuters.

Hedge funds lost only 3.9% in October, but overall, in the third quarter, they lost 16% of assets, ending at $2.497 trillion, due to heavy investor redemptions, according to a Wednesday report from HedgeFund.net.

Charles Schwab on Wednesday unveiled an eight-step plan to help people prioritize both their short-term and long-term savings objectives.

It’s not just plain-vanilla equity funds that investors are bailing out of. In the past two months, investors have redeemed 16% of assets from exchange-traded notes, bringing assets under management from a peak of $7.3 billion in June to $3.9 billion today, The Wall Street Journal reports. The rest of the decline is due to falling prices in commodity and currency ETNs.