Investment funds

WASHINGTON — President Obama's successful fight to pass healthcare reform has given a bill to revamp the financial system a dramatic boost, lawmakers from both parties said Wednesday.

Pending hedge fund regulations in the European Union are “protectionist [and] discriminate against U.S. firms and activities,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Sixty-one percent of leading mutual fund companies are taking advantage of the provision in the 2010 Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act that allows investors to convert a traditional IRA to a Roth, by proactively educating investors, a Corporate Insight analysis found.

Bullish sentiment toward equities has shifted from Europe to America and Japan, according to a BoA Merrill Lynch fund manager survey.

HSBC Global Asset Management is planning a UCITS III European absolute-return fund, the HSBC GIF European Alpha Equity Fund, scheduled to debut next month. The fund will use both quantitative and qualitative factors in a market-neutral strategy to invest in stocks, equity swaps and short positions in developed European nations.

Citing the elimination of doubt about the healthcare reform bill by its historic passage on Sunday, Legg Mason Chairman and Chief Investment Officer Bill Miller believes healthcare stocks will benefit from the new bill in the near-term, but as higher taxes kick in, the overall market could suffer, Reuters reports.

Data integrity is the No. 1 concern for the 86% of the 130 C-suite fund executives from North America and Europe that Confluence surveyed, and 89% said consolidating fund administration data into a common database is critical.

Data integrity is the No. 1 concern for the 86% of the 130 C-suite fund executives from North America and Europe that Confluence surveyed, and 89% said consolidating fund administration data into a common database is critical.

Charles Schwab filed arguments in federal court in San Francisco on March 19 to try to preclude the Securities and Exchange Commission from suing it over its YieldPlus fund, which had nearly 50% of its assets in mortgage-backed securities, Bloomberg reports.

While the news on the healthcare reform is filled with backslapping from one political party and hand wringing from the other, the truth for advisers and their clients is that this historic legislation might be as much an investment opportunity as anything else.

Last week's initial public offering by the Palo Alto, Calif., company, a retirement plan advisor co-founded by a Nobel Prize winner, affirmed investor belief in a business model offering low-cost sophisticated retirement advice to individual investors.

Hedge funds in Europe have begun embracing the UCITS III structure to sell their portfolios to a wider base of retail investors and rebuild trust, but shareholder interest groups warn this may be a vast mistake. Transparency of complex structures still does not make an investor well-informed or an investment suitable, they argue.

In recent years, managers of target-date funds have made the argument that target-date funds need to take on added equity exposure and risk to see investors through retirements that could span 30 years or longer.

A new company is promising to shake up the way Americans invest by providing individuals with direct access to institutionally priced mutual funds and other investments.

HSBC has launched the World Selection Funds, sub-advised funds managed by a wide range of respected investment mangers and that employ tactical asset management to invest in multiple asset classes, including domestic and international equity, bonds, commodities, property and private equity.

ProFunds Group has just unveiled three ETFs with single-inverse exposure to China, U.S. real estate and U.S. basic materials.

ProFunds Group has just unveiled three ETFs with single-inverse exposure to China, U.S. real estate and U.S. basic materials.

Seventy-five percent of financial advisers’ clients are planning to delay retirement up to five years, according to the quarter Brinker Barometer.

HSBC has launched the World Selection Funds, sub-advised funds managed by a wide range of respected investment mangers and that employ tactical asset management to invest in multiple asset classes, including domestic and international equity, bonds, commodities, property and private equity.

While investors shunned stock mutual funds in 2009 despite their dramatic comeback, they may finally be poised to return to the stock market via long-term funds, The Wall Street Journal reports.