Investment products

Shaken by high unemployment, market volatility and ongoing concerns about a recurring worldwide recession, U.S. investors have entrusted only a projected $80 billion to stock and bond funds in 2011.

Morningstar is drilling down deeper than ever before when it looks at fixed-income funds, the investment research firm said, announcing the launch of a new fixed-income classification system.

Investors went on a bit of a buying spree Friday after digesting the latest plan by euro zone leaders to shore up their debt issues and a somewhat encouraging consumer sentiment report.

Investors dumped shares in late trading Thursday on reports that German officials rejected some of the EU summit draft measures intended to help extricate some Eurozone nations from their daunting sovereign debt issues.

LPL Financial said it has added more than 500 net new advisors this year, bringing it close to 13,000. The additions came as the company prepared hikes in the fees it charges them.

The Dow Jones Industrial average moved up 46 points to close at 12,196.37 Wednesday while the S&P 500 added 2.54 points to finish at 1,261.01.

The coming year will pose new questions about how to handle debt internationally and shape up as a new test for the U.S., in what will likely lead to a low-growth environment for investors.

Since 1977, the Gateway Fund has tried to shield investors from the bear market's bite. Here's how.

Equity-income funds provide a buffer against extreme market volatility.

NYSE Euronext said its trading in futures and options was up slightly in November. But stock trading in the United States was down 10% from a year ago.

Stocks moved higher Tuesday on a report that European leaders are considering a second bailout fund to supplement the one they have already agreed to in the hopes of stabilizing markets in the Eurozone and bringing some sense of calm to international markets.

Stock indices used to be employed as a benchmark that active managers of investment funds tried to exceed. Now, active management strategies are being turned into indices, causing confusion at the Super Bowl of Indexing. Should a distinction be made?

Planners aren't as enthusiastic as some of their clients about gold and silver.

Standard & Poor's Indices said it launched a Pan-Arabian stock index.

U.S. stocks gained ground Monday despite a troubling report that Standard & Poor’s would soon put “several” Eurozone countries on a “creditwatch negative” alert even though German and French officials said they had hammered out a European debt plan that would restrict future deficits without throwing the continent’s economy into a tailspin.

Unemployment among Americans without college educations is now in the mid-teens, says Goldman Sachs investment strategist Abby Joseph Cohen. But there are unrecognized strengths in exports and equities that should be recognized in investing in a recovery.

Standard & Poor’s famously downgrades its rating of U.S. debt for the first time on Aug. 4. Investors pull out of equities and park their proceeds in ... U.S. Treasury bonds.

The operators of the Hong Kong Exchanges are taking steps to enter the index business, toward creating benchmarks of the performance of stocks on mainland China and in emerging markets, such as Russia, Brazil, India and South Africa.

The Dow Jones Industrial average closed out its best week in more three years Friday essentially flat, finishing off less than one point (0.61) at 12,019.42 despite a much-better-than-expected jobs report.

It was a mixed bag for stocks Thursday as investors awaited much-anticipated non-farm payroll figures due out Friday morning, one week after the Labor Department reported an unsettling spike in jobless claims.