Fund performance

While flows to money market mutual funds increased at an alarming rate in the first quarter of the year (see MME “Money Funds Seeing Huge Inflows, Opportunities,” this week’s issue), assets fell by $34.53 billion in the week ended Tuesday, according to data from iMoneyNet’s Money Fund Report.

The Hartford suffered a serious 83% drop in net income due, the firm announced yesterday, to poor investments.

While Warren Buffet continues to buy up and broker M&A deals, making financial news headlines left and right, a fund that mimics his preternatural talent for picking winning stocks, bonds and private equity opportunities—and run by Buffet’s former stockbroker Bill Ruane—has reopened.

WASHINGTON - The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's $144 million enforcement order against Wachovia Corp. is likely to force banks to step up oversight of telemarketing customers.

Many investors are gasping at the first-quarter losses on their financial statements and wondering whether they should change their asset allocation to a more conservative plan.

Hedge Fund Investments Drop in First Quarter

A flood of retail and institutional investors have hit the sidelines and settled comfortably into money market funds in light of the equity market roller coaster and credit market stumble.

Jim Goff is a rare portfolio manager and research director who sticks to his guns no matter how erratic or rewarding the market. In fact, he has stuck, for 20 years now, with a fund complex that has just about seen it all.

WASHINGTON — Initial claims for U.S. state unemployment benefits plunged 33,000 to 342,000 in the April 19 survey week, the Labor Department reported yesterday, but a Labor analyst cited “no special factors.”

WASHINGTON—Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson met in private with top lenders and servicers this week to warn them the housing market is continuing to deteriorate and press them for a new solution, several sources said Thursday.

Two ranking Congressmen sent the Securities and Exchange Commission a letter yesterday, urging Chairman Christopher Cox to cut a break on redemptions on auction-rate securities for mutual fund portfolio managers and their supporting operational and compliance teams. The Congressmen pointed to illiquidity and hard-to-price conditions for auction rates today.

Fines Continue to be Levied on Fund Companies for Market Timing & Late Trading, With a Renewed Focus on U.K. Orders

While hedge fund activity in commodities is contributing to the surge of oil to record highs, long-term, fundamental supply constraints are the main culprit.

‘Bond Broadside’ Includes Two Worst-Performers, Down -73% & -70%

John Paulson, founder of the hedge fund Paulson & Company, made an unprecedented $3.7 billion last year by betting against subprime mortgages and the financial products that held them.

Standard & Poor's said the potential bill to U.S. taxpayers for bailing out Wall Street firms could grow to $400 billion. If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are included, the bill could soar by an additional $1.4 trillion, for a total of $1.8 trillion, causing the U.S. government to loose its AAA rating and plunging the country into a deep and prolonged recession.

Mutual fund managers invested in securities with any type of credit exposure will want to know that sister publication Asset Securitization Report has learned that another major wave of $2.8 billion-to perhaps as high as $8 billion-in collateralized debt obligation (CDO) liquidations is set to hit the market.

NEW YORK - While the majority of economists now believe the U.S. is in a recession, market optimists are already looking ahead to the rebound.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the Securities and Exchange Commission and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo are looking into possible irregularities in auction rate securities (ARS).

A number of news events in the past week alone indicate without question the U.S. economy is at a dangerous inflection point, but so far, no one-no economist, analyst, fund manager, regulator, legislator, president or CEO-is willing to put together the pieces to talk about something other than snapshot first-quarter, year-over-year or historical trendline data that make a case for the return of the markets.