Fund performance

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).

Pax World Management Corporation has settled charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission that two of its funds, Pax World Growth and Pax World High Yield, purchased securities that violated their fund policies.

The energy and commodities sectors have dropped significantly below their 200-day moving averages and are now in sell territory, says Tom Lydon, editor of ETF Trends and president of Global Trends Investment.

India’s booming fund management industry has started to decline as the Indian stock market has plunged nearly a third so far this year, Reuters reports.

Faith-based mutual funds have experienced significant growth in a short amount of time, increasing from $500 million in 1997, to approximately $17.5 billion today, according to McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

A year ago, Chinese investors poured their money into mutual funds, believing they would receive huge returns on their investments, Business Times Singapore reports. Since the market bubble began shrinking last October, however, mutual fund investments have declined. Chinese mutual funds have declined 30% in the first half of this year, down 668.8 billion yuan in the first quarter and 413.9 billion yuan in the second quarter.

What’s attractive to the crowd with more $500,000 in investable assets? Investment research from their advisers, apparently.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examination released a new ComplianceAlert recognizing common flaws and weaknesses among mutual fund companies.

New income and precious metals funds are now available for Canadian investors within Investors Group (IG). They are the Putnam U.S. High Yield Income Fund and IG Mackenzie Global Precious Metal Class.

Investors looking to hedge the continuing slide of the U.S. dollar may want to consider investing in one of Rydex’s eight CurrencyShares exchange-traded funds.

BOSTON - Workers love pension plans, but providing 20 to 30 years of benefits to a huge retired workforce can cripple most companies' profits.