Investments

Muni yields have outperformed those of Treasuries by rallying four to five basis points on the intermediate and long ends of the curve throughout the holiday-shortened week. Meanwhile, equivalent Treasury yields backed up three to four basis points.

Interactive Brokers Group, which considered buying part or all of Jon Corzine's MF Global Holdings as it began to collapse in October, said it has begun segregating customer funds from house funds “on a daily basis.”

U.S. stocks maintained their recent momentum Thursday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 45 points to 12,623.98 following a better-than-expected jobs report.

Bank of America’s Global Wealth and Investment Management business saw its 2011 fourth quarter net income decline precipitously compared to the fourth quarter of 2010 as lower transactional activity offset higher net interest income and asset management fees.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 30 component companies said they expect to pump up their annual dividend payouts by 12.3% in 2012 to almost $105 billion.

Knight Capital Group said its volume of trading in U.S. equities fell 19.3% in December, compared to November. Its volume also fell 3.5% from a year earlier.

Exchange-traded funds are like stocks. Except they're not. They’re sort of like mutual funds, but not really. Here’s a glossary of ETF terms to help clear things up.

The SEC has joined the U.S. Department of Justice in approving the merger of NYSE Euronext with Deutsche Boerse. Now the only remaining hurdle is obtaining approval from competition commissioners of the European Commission.

Investors steered $1.43 billion into stock mutual funds during the week ended Wednesday, Jan. 11, breaking a near nine-month spell of investor redemptions that totaled more than $172 billion, according to the latest statistics from the Investment Company Institute.

Investors opened their wallets Wednesday following an upbeat report from home builders and word that Greece is nearing a deal with its private creditors that would bring some much-needed stability to the region.

Investors steered $1.43 billion into stock mutual funds during the week ended Wednesday, Jan. 11, breaking a near nine-month spell of investor redemptions that totaled more than $172 billion, according to the latest statistics from the Investment Company Institute.

There’s logic in thinking that trading in funds that promise double or triple the movement of the market will exacerbate the swings that occur. But it would invert reality.

There has been no New Year’s bounce, says Raymond James Equity Research. Trading in stocks in the United States in the first half of January is down 18% versus a year ago.

Stocks moved higher Tuesday in light trading as the Dow Jones Industrial Average moved up 60 points to finish at 12,482.07 while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq picked up 4.58 and 17.41 points, respectively.

The SEC has charged an investment advisory arm of UBS with overstating the prices of securities in three mutual funds, some times by more than 100%.

After a gloomy 2011, this year the outlook for regional banks seems better, according to S&P Capital IQ.

When broker-dealers give money to California school bond campaigns, it appears to be money well spent. A review of campaign finance records found a nearly perfect correlation between broker-dealer contributions to California school bond efforts in 2010 and their underwriting subsequent bond sales.

Retail investors in municipal bonds got whipsawed in 2011.

The number of listed exchange-traded funds grew 20.6% in 2011 and the number of listed exchange-traded notes grew 53.8%, according to U.S. figures developed by the Exchange-Traded Fund Association.

The world's largest asset management firm will be the first to list securities on a BATS Global Markets electronic venue that now competes for listings on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market. BlackRock will list eight single-country ETFs with BATS. Based on MSCI Indexes, the ETFs will cover: Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, India, Norway and the U.K. The Norway fund will start trading Jan. 24 and the other funds soon after.