Investments

This week, the age of the actively managed exchange-traded fund officially debuts.

Hungry for healthier returns, more mutual funds are investing in commodities, commodity futures, swaps and options.

On Feb. 14, Vanguard's 64,000 Facebook fans received virtual candy hearts with the messages:

Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott, says a diversified portfolio of dividend-paying stocks can help investors meet today’s expenses as well as those to come in the years ahead.

State Street’s SPDR Morgan Stanley Technology ETF MTK announced that it had received a $108,328 payment from a class action settlement related to Juniper Networks, Inc. The SPDR has slightly more than 2.7 million shares outstanding, meaning that the payment will translate into just over 4 cents of gain per share.

Los Angeles, Calif.-based First Pacific Advisors is inviting its investors to spend a day at the beach with the firm. Specifically, the firm is holding its first Investor Day on Monday, May 21, at the Hotel Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica, Calif.

The Highland Credit Strategies Fund has changed its name to Pyxis Credit Strategies Fund.

Total money market mutual fund assets increased by $6.22 billion to $2.665 trillion in the week ended Feb. 22, the Investment Company Institute reported.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board has released a long-range plan to improve transparency in the muni market by collecting a wide range of new information from a variety of sources, integrating that data on the Electronic Municipal Market Access system, and making it available to investors and other market participants in a more user-friendly and searchable format.

Total money market mutual fund assets increased by $6.22 billion to $2.665 trillion in the week ended Wednesday, Feb. 22, the Investment Company Institute reported.

Deborah Fuhr is launching her own firm devoted to research and consulting in the exchange trade market, called ETF Global Insight.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied up 46 points to close at 12.984.69 Thursday as investors took a shine to stocks in virtually all the major industries following a one-day sell-off.

Yorkville Capital Management said it created 11 sector indices and 4 composite indices that will track the performance of investment partnerships that get traded on public exchanges.

BlackRock’s former global head of exchange traded fund research, Deborah Fuhr, is back.

Affluent retail investors are pulling assets away from traditional mutual funds in favor of exchange-traded funds and other alternatives, resulting in significant market consolidation, according to new findings by Cogent Research.

Cove Street Capital is sponsoring its first mutual fund, the CSC Small Cap Value Fund, which it begin managing on Jan. 27. The fund’s former investment manager was City National Asset Management, Inc.

Affluent retail investors are pulling assets away from traditional mutual funds in favor of exchange-traded funds and other alternatives, resulting in significant market consolidation, according to new findings by Cogent Research.

Exchange-traded fund developer Invesco PowerShares Capital Management plans to list two ETFs that will give investors access to what it calls “high-beta strategies,’’ covering the emerging and international developed markets.

Due to internal company limits on the number of exchange traded notes it can have circulating in securities market, Credit Suisse said it has temporarily suspended issuance of the high volatility product VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX Short-Term ETNs.

Bond behemoth PIMCO is making a push into the equities space with the hire of Geoffrey Johnson as an executive vice president and global equity portfolio manager. He will begin with the firm in April and will be based in the Newport Beach, Calif. office.