Investment funds

Total assets of money market mutual funds rose $34.48 billion during the week ending Dec. 10, to settle at $3.777 trillion, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Investment managers will now be able to automate, centralize and standardize purchases, exchanges and redemptions directly though the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s Fund/SERV and other mutual fund services, instead of having to go through a third party.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday fined eight former Fidelity traders $1.04 million for accepting lavish gifts from brokers, not least of which included trips on private jets and courtside sports tickets.

With interest rates falling so low, it will soon cost more for fund companies to run somemoney market funds than their investments, The Wall Street Journal reports. Rather than step in to make investors whole or permit their funds to break the buck, some money funds will likely close.

Fidelity International and its U.K. partner Dalton Strategic Partnership will be saying goodbye to David Urch and Jonathan Cobb, two high-profile equity portfolio managers they hired to work in the Edinburgh office just before the credit crunch, Dow Jones reports.

The Epiphany Fund, which invests according to Catholic principles, can’t exactly boast that it is bucking the trend of most mutual funds going into the red. It’s down 33.5% so far this year.

The Tokyo joint venture between Fortress Investment Group and DKR Capital is laying off an unspecified number of people, Dow Jones reports. However, the office is not shutting down entirely.

Mark-to-market accounting has merit, but financial institutions need better clarity on its application for very distressed assets, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox said.

Reserve Management has scheduled payments on 12 of its funds, at $1 per net asset value, to begin this week and continue through the week of Jan. 12. Investors in seven of the funds will be receiving all of their money back.

PIMCO has frozen dividends yesterday on six municipal bond funds because the value of their investments is insufficient to cover the funds' debt.

Treasury four-week bills that yield zero percent have attracted $30 billion in assets, the Treasury Department announced. And when investors trade the paper with one another, sometimes they get negative yields. This is just further proof of investors’ keen aversion to risk. Treasury first issued the notes in 2001.

Fidelity Cash Reserves, a $130.7 billion money market fund, is now the biggest mutual fund in the nation, surpassing American Funds’ Growth Fund of America. And Fidelity Investments is no longer the biggest fund company in the nation; Vanguard is.

Fidelity Investments this week launched Fidelity WealthCentral, a best-of-breed wealth management platform touted as one that will transform the way advisors conduct business day to day. The platform integrates portfolio management, customer relationship management, financial planning, portfolio rebalancing and trading into one workstation for RIAs, using various technology from Oracle, Advent, Emerging Information Systems and Northfield Information Services.

Fund bonuses will, undoubtedly, be far lower this year, and with that, a number of managers could look to jump ship, Investment News reports.

Given the fact that this year was one of the worst that mutual funds have ever faced, MarketWatch's Chuck Jaffe has some advice for mutual funds that might startle even the most dyed-in-the-wool manager.

Citadel Investment Group is closing its Tokyo office and laying off 12 people there, as well as another 25 in Hong Kong, Reuters reports. Going forward, all of its Asian operations will be run out of the Hong Kong office, which will be left with a staff of between 25 and 30 people.

Existing risk tolerance models have done nothing to help investors with any equity exposure this year, and with so many clients’ assets depleted by the market downturn, advisers are trying to find a new way to assess risk. That was one of the key findings of this year’s Retirement Indicator survey, of 212 financial advisers, sponsored by Brinker Capital.

Moody’s Investors Service has affirmed the long-term A1 senior unsecured debt rating for FMR, parent company of Fidelity Investments. Moody’s said that the broad offerings of FMR—including mutual funds, particularly fixed income and money market funds; brokerage services; and benefits administration—and its strong leadership position in each of these industries, should help it weather the economic meltdown.

Hedge funds returned negative -2.7% in November, bringing their year-to-date decline to 18%, according to the Hennessee Hedge Fund Index, The Wall Street Journal reports. While the decline is painful, it is at least less than the -5.5% loss in October and the double-digit declines in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, the Dow Jones Industrial Index and the Nasdaq.

Fidelity Investments has created a credit card in partnership with American Express that allows customers to transfer rewards from retail purchases to their individual retirement accounts.