Investment funds

The Securities and Exchange Commission has upheld an administrative judge’s ruling that a mutual fund trader must pay more than $200,000 in penalties for accepting gifts from broker-dealers to steer trades their way.

2011 has not been a great year for international equity mutual funds, especially compared to domestic U.S. fund counterparts. But this situation could very well change and investors in the near future, according to analysts at Standard & Poor's Equity Research.

Long-term mutual funds were hit with -$10.381 billion in redemptions the week ended July 27, the Investment Company Institute said. This came on the heels of -$4.58 billion in redemptions the previous week.

According to Strategic Insight’s latest report, “Emerging Market Bridges: All Eyes on Asia and Latin America for Fund Managers and Private Banks,” local developed markets will continue to struggle for the foreseeable future, and investment professionals should look to the growth centers of Asia and Latin America to drive performance.

American Century has launched the American Century Global Real Estate Fund, managed by Steven Brown. He will be supported by analysts Steven Rodriguez and Vishal Govil.

Private equity firm Warburg Pincus has acquired a majority stake in The Mutual Fund Store as well as a minority stake in Summit Partners, which invested in The Mutual Fund Store in 2006.

Columbia Management has launched the Columbia Flexible Capital Income Fund, which seeks to provide income generation and capital appreciation.

Janus has launched the Janus Asia Equity Fund, which aims to deliver long-term growth by investing in both developed and emerging markets in Asia, ex-Japan.

No one wants the kind of panic that nearly ensued when the Reserve Primary Fund broke the buck on Sept. 15, 2008. In the three days following, there was a near-run on money market funds, with $169 billion in redemptions.

For the past 18 years, it's been almost an article of faith that an exchange-traded fund would be the epitome of a passive investment.

Unique products may bring higher costs that outweigh advantages.

Federated Investors has absorbed $100.6 million in assets from the Tributary International Equity Fund and merged them into the Federated International Leaders Fund, a fund will a similar mandate and that invests in high-quality foreign companies that appear to be undervalued.

Vanguard Group is extending its Admiral low-cost shares to six additional domestic equity index funds, effective September. The new fees will range from 10 basis points to 21 basis points.

Precidian Investments, formerly known as Next Investments, has launched the Maxis Nikkei 225 Index Fund, an exchange-traded fund that Precidian says is the first U.S-listed ETF based on the Nikkei.

Franklin Templeton Investments has launched the Templeton Frontier Markets Fund in Canada, which will invest at least 80% of its portfolio in 61 countries in the very early stages of development, such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Romania, Jordan, Tunisia, Columbia, Zambia, Paraguay and Kenya. International investing expert Mark Mobius will run the fund.

SunAmerica Asset Management has launched the SunAmerica Global Trends Fund, a fund sub-advised by Wellington Management and that combines 10 global asset classes with a rules-based asset allocation strategy that seeks to move in and out of changing markets. The fund will invest primarily in futures contracts and also use technical analysis. It will have between 0% and 10% exposure to each of the global asset classes.

Emerging Global has launched a suite of 11 emerging markets exchange-traded funds under the brand of GEMS (Global Emerging Market Sector) Funds. Three of the funds are rebranded and eight are brand new.

While hedge funds-of-funds tout their diversification as a limit on risk, this is not the case, according to research by NYU Stern Finance Professor Stephen Brown and co-authors Greg Gregoriou and Razvan Pascalau of SUNY College at Plattsburgh School of Business and Economics. In extreme market conditions, the professors attest, a broadly diversified hedge fund-of-fund is actually more sensitive to risk than an average hedge fund.

The 225 S&P 500 companies that share full reporting information received 46.3% of their sales outside of the U.S. in 2010, down slightly from the 46.6% they received in 2009 and quite a bit less than the 47.9% that foreign sales comprised of their total revenues in 2008, S&P Indices said.

As money market funds hold approximately $1.3 trillion in U.S. Treasuries, nearly half of their total $2.7 trillion in assets, investors would probably be spooked in the event of a default by the U.S. government and rush to the exits to redeem their shares. That is the dire warning from Fitch Ratings.