Investment products

Two new Standard & Poor’s indexes tracking municipal bonds launched yesterday, paving the way for Vanguard to enter the municipal exchange-traded fund business.

If you have clients who still have a healthy dose of outrage at the big banks, now there is a fund just for them.

The trend towards younger target-date fund participants is due to the fact that new employees are more likely to be automatically enrolled in their employer’s 401(k) plan, where target-date funds are often the default option, the study said.

Despite the fact small-cap stocks have tumbled recently as greater economic uncertainty increased, the average domestic small cap mutual fund continues to outperform. So how come some observerrs are skeptical?

The growing investor acceptance of taxable municipal bonds over the past year appears to have hit a stumbling block.

Morningstar says that Hartford needs to cut fees more to truly compete.

International investment managers from across the spectrum have cast a dark shadow on the prospective effects for inflation and commercial real estate, but they are optimistic toward gains in currency and the U.S. and Asian equity markets, however.

The good news for investors is that actively-managed ETFs are likely to grow further and are showing some momentum.

Shorter Maturities, BAB Advantages

Hedge funds finished the volatile first half with modest declines.

After the Depression, it took 25 years for the market to come back. After the “great recession” it took a matter of weeks.

Despite excitement surrounding investing in emerging markets, many industry observers worry the sector won't be able to measure up to expectations.

Build America Bonds have begun to reshape long-term taxable bond indexes that until now included little state and local government debt.

Hedge funds finished the volatile first half with modest declines. The HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index lost 0.81% in June, more than offsetting the gains in the first five months of the year to leave the index down 0.18% for the first half of 2010.

If the latest version of financial reform becomes law as expected, banks would lose a lucrative but wildly unpredictable source of profits scaling back so-called alternative investments over the next several years.

In the perennial debate over active versus passive investing, FundQuest calls a draw.

Closed-end municipal bond funds continue to enjoy shelter from the turbulence plaguing the rest of the sector.

Investors pulled cash out of municipal bond mutual funds last week for just the third time in a year and a half, despite a strong week for state and local government debt.

Just as the alternative energy industry will most likely provide lucrative investment opportunities, so will the overseas markets in the coming years, which is why Fidelity Investments is positioning its 20-year-old environmental energy mutual fund right at the crossroads of those two businesses.

Thesis Flexible is an alternative strategy fund that primarily uses hedge fund strategies and is already on the Fidelity and Schwab platforms.