Investment products

During the week ended June 19, investors yanked an estimated $7.97 billion from taxable and municipal bond funds.

Summer is an opportunity to soak up the sun, spend time with friends and family, and enjoy the little things in life. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get ahead. Check out 20 books that could give you an edge on the competition.

The core portfolio allocation for moderate investors has traditionally been a 60% equities and 40% fixed-income mix. But changing market dynamics may pose a challenge to this construct going forward for three important reasons that you and your clients need to be aware of.

Direxion has launched two leveraged exchange-traded funds that track Japanese equity market performance.

The new offerings bring the total number of Merrill Edge Select Portfolios to 12—the original 10 are primarily focused on total return.

Investors remain wary of the financial sector, which is bad news for advisors. But by examining the best practices of successful advisors, we can all learn valuable lessons about how to strengthen trust and build greater public confidence.

Exchange-traded fund investors pumped in some $84 billion of assets into equity ETFs while fixed income funds brought in $30 billion through May 31, according to data from State Street Global Investors.

Advisors needs and wants are moving targets and mutual fund wholesalers must constantly adjust to if they want to hit the bullseye.

The tax-exempt market took another beating Monday as the 10-year yield rose to a 24-month high and traders said demand for municipal bonds was still deteriorating.

Pacific Investment Management Co.’s William Gross, the billionaire who runs the world’s largest mutual fund, is re-jiggering family investments in Pimco bond funds that have been beaten down by rising interest rates.

Right now, hedge funds cannot technically advertise to anyone. They cannot solicit potential investors — they must find a way to cleverly (but legally) inspire accredited investors to come to them, ask questions, and hope they’ll stick around. It’s not an easy business by any means, but with the potential to make billions of dollars a year; enterprising individuals are frequently attracted to the industry.

Municipal bond investors, spooked that interest rates' climb from record lows is accelerating, continue to pull money from the market in record-breaking droves.

To evolve and succeed, advisors have to make the transition from practitioners to business owners. As a result we've seen larger firms arising as advisors attempt to add scalability.

Investors pulled $13.34 billion from mutual funds for the week ended Wednesday, June 12, according to data from the Investment Company Institute.

The mutual-fund industry, in what may be the last round of lobbying against tighter rules for money-market funds, rejected a scaled-back proposal to force only the riskiest funds to give up their stable $1 share price.

Lets just admit it. The words "indexed annuity" make advisors cringe. But is it time to give these products another look?

While liquid alternative assets grew double-digits last year within the wirehouse segment, the asset class has also seemingly hit a wall.

The bank extended portfolio management and asset allocation services to clients with $50,000 in investable assets. The services were previously only available to trust clients.

Now is a good time to buy contemporary art, even though prices have never been higher, the Dallas-based collector Howard Rachofsky says as he digests his bratwurst.

Sessions at the 25th annual Morningstar Investment Conference covered a range of topics from actively managed ETFs, closed-end funds and alternatives to strategies to boost retirement income and solutions to the “yield conundrum.” Here is a baker's dozen of the smartest things we heard at the conference.