Fund performance

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.

In a poll of bank wealth managers a day after Barack Obama was elected to become the 44th president of the United States, 50% said they expect their high-net-worth clients to be negatively impacted by the new administration, SEI found. Twelve percent said they expect a positive impact, but 38% said they were sure whether it will be positive or negative.

While the average equity mutual fund is down 48% and the average hedge fund is down 20% so far this year, one uncanny hedge fund manager, Bernard V. Drury of Drury Capital, has posted incredible year-to-date gains of 60%, The New York Times reports.

PALM BEACH, Fla. - Capturing 401(k) rollovers has been top of mind for mutual fund companies for years. Now, with billions of dollars flowing out of equity funds, $682 billion in September alone, mostly into cash, capturing 401(k) rollovers and moving money out of cash and safe bets back into equities is the name of the game.

Long-short money managers have been breathing a sigh of relief with the end to the Securities and Exchange Commission's ban on short sales of financial stocks. The three-week SEC ban on the short sale of some 1,000 financial stocks that ended Oct. 9 had wreaked havoc among money managers.

PALM BEACH, Fla. - Insurance companies and mutual fund firms are jumping on the bandwagon to provide guaranteed retirement income solutions, but experts say these types of investment options won't see wide adoption rates among the general public until they become a qualified default investment alternative (QDIA) in 401(k) plans.

Volatile markets are shaking up the idea of what makes a star manager, and previous giants are falling to the wayside as new talent with new ideas moves in to fill their place.

Total money market mutual fund assets have increased $21.79 billion to reach $3.608 trillion for the week ending Nov. 5, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Exchange-traded funds continued attracting new investors in October, though most of the month’s $7.3 billion in net inflows came from three big names, according to the National Stock Exchange.

Indicating that it is only the first of at least two immediate job cut waves, Fidelity Investments announced Thursday it will eliminate 2.9% of its 44,400 workforce, or 1,300 positions, by the end of the month. A second layoff, the size of which has yet to be determined, will occur in the first quarter of next year, Fidelity said.

Even as U.S. corporations continue to announce layoffs, investors are beginning to regain faith in the stock markets, according to a poll of 500 investors by MoneyShow.com. Fifty-one percent are bullish on economic conditions, up from 43% in August. In kind, 29% characterize themselves as bearish, down from a steady 39% from July through September.