Fund performance

Pimco has overcome the departure of bond trader Bill Gross and a record period of outflows from its funds may be on the verge of ending, said Munich-based Allianz, the company’s owner.

Warnings of a liquidity crisis in the bond market are a myth created by Wall Street in hopes of repealing regulation, said Krishna Memani, the chief investment officer of OppenheimerFunds.

Investors yanked the most money in five weeks from municipal-bond mutual funds after Puerto Rico defaulted on debt.

Manulife Financial, Canada’s largest insurer, posted earnings that met analysts’ expectations as gains in insurance and asset management were tempered by rising interest rates.

In a world dominated by institutional investors, hedge funds and service industries, sentiment is as likely to drive prices as anything else, says former Salomon Brothers analyst Laszlo Birinyi.

Investors pulled $2.5 billion from Pimco's flagship fund in July, the 27th consecutive month of outflows from what used to be the world’s largest mutual fund.

The billions of dollars in new capital from mutual funds into startups are largely responsible for skyrocketing valuations, fewer initial public offerings and talk of a bubble.

Pimco said regulators are considering taking action against the firm over marking of securities in the exchange-traded fund version of its flagship Total Return Fund.

In the past 12 months investors traded $18.2 trillion worth of ETF shares, according to data from the NYSE and Bloomberg. That means the amount of dollars exchanging hands through ETFs is now more than the U.S. GDP, which stands at $17.4 trillion.

'Shark Tank's' Kevin O'Leary assumed the starter role for his own venture into ETFs this month, partnering with FTSE Russell to launch the O'Shares FTSE US Quality Dividend ETF, the first in a series of five smart beta funds.

The world's biggest money managers are staking a claim in the surging market for stock and bond ETFs that strip out currency risk.

Janus fell by the most in more than a month as investor flows slowed in the second quarter and profit trailed some analysts’ expectations.

Though the industry reaped 34% profit margins and global AUM rose 10.5% to $67 trillion in 2014, revenues rose only 6.3% to $319 billion, while fees dropped an average 40 basis points.

For either the best fund or the worst, how you couch the year's performance to date is key, industry communications experts say.

Mutual fund performance is similar to the performance of stocks, a Wharton professor contends. As a company matures and grows, more investors become aware of it, and its share price better reflects its prospects.

Carl Icahn criticized asset management firms such as BlackRock for selling ETFs that give an illusion of liquidity for “extremely illiquid, and extremely overpriced” securities such as high yield bonds.

BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, said second-quarter profit rose 1.4 % as it attracted money into higher-fee products including active funds and ETFs.

Actively managed ETFs are surging in Canada, expanding a market already dominated by iShares and posing a challenge to the mutual-fund industry that has among the highest management fees in the world.

Industry giants BlackRock and State Street are rolling out hedged ETFs at an unprecedented clip after smaller rivals lured the bulk of $41 billion of inflows this year.

Asset manager growth came largely from rising global asset values. At the same time, a continued shift into lower-cost products, such ETFs, pinched net revenue growth, while net new assets trickled in.