Fund performance

If you can't say anything nice about someone, don't say anything at all.

A Florida-based law team is working to help investors of the failed Charles Schwab YieldPlus Fund recuperate some of their losses.

Total money market mutual fund assets rose $32.09 billion to $3.56 trillion for the week ending Aug. 6, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. of Columbus, Ohio, said it has agreed to buy all of the outstanding publicly held class A common stock of Nationwide Financial Services Inc.

The Blackstone Group reported a $165.6 million profit for the second quarter, thanks to huge gains in its hedge fund businesses, according to the International Herald Tribune. The private equity firm’s hedge funds reported $225.2 million in revenue, offsetting other gains and large losses, including a pretax loss of $185.5 million.

In spite of their strong records, two Vanguard funds that have been suffering steep redemptions will now be reopened to investors—and industry observers say this is an indication of investors’ skittishness in this weak economy.

Whereas the S&P 500 declined 0.99%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.25% and the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 1.42% in July, the Hennesee Hedge Fund Index fell 1.95%.

MassMutual’s retirement services division is offering a customized 401(k) tool for plan sponsors and retirement plan advisers, based on asset allocation tools from Morningstar.

Hedge funds are enjoying tremendous success in Hong Kong and Singapore, with the number of managers and assets under management going through the roof, according to data from Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission and Singapore’s Monetary Authority.

Morningstar has added global real estate and currencies as two new categories it will track for mutual funds, and alternative investments as a new broad asset classes.

Fidelity Investments is returning to China’s stock markets, particularly consumer goods, healthcare and building companies, hoping to find values and that inflation has reached an apex, Reuters reports.

Some investors get jittery even in the best of times—and these are not the best of times. The fluctuations in the stock market have created quite the headache for advisers, not to mention the surfeit of investment information via the Internet and cable news.

Mutual funds that place bets against the market by shorting stocks are doing better than typical, long-only funds. Mutual funds that short stocks take on different levels of risk, using various derivatives, such as futures, to protect the bets taken against indexes.

Despite hedge funds that have received returns on investments in commodities and emerging-market stocks, the hedge fund industry, as a whole, is set to turn in their worst monthly performance since July 2002.

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidance last week for fund boards of directors in assessing their firm’s soft-dollar practices. The SEC said it was issuing the guidance a full two years after the limitations it put on soft dollars in 2006, restricting it only to research, due to rapidly evolving market and trading practices. True enough, there are wide discrepancies among brokerages today, due to rapidly evolving markets, trading practices and electronic crossing networks. Fund companies have until Oct. 1 to comment on the SEC’s guidance.

America's new mass affluent blend so effortlessly into society that it's often impossible to tell them apart from a traditional middle class family one day, or from an upper class family the next.

Massachusetts sued Merrill Lynch on July 31 on the charges of fraud and “dishonest and unethical” conduct, Reuters reports.

Assets of money market mutual funds fell by $5.08 billion to rest at $3.502 trillion during the week ending July 30, according to the Investment Company Institute.

U.S. Rep. George Miller of California is probably the best friend 401(k) investors have on Capitol Hill.

The managed account solutions industry needs to adopt communications standards, according to a white paper from the Money Management Institute (MMI).