Investments

Fidelity Charitable has created an array of seven investment options offering diversification across asset classes and risk. In addition, Fidelity Charitable has created an online tool to help investors make investment decisions.

Financial advisors and clients who may have been curious about exchange-traded fund managed portfolios but have been deterred by the lack of any objective rating or way to compare the performances of hundreds of these funds will soon have those tools at their disposal.

Individual investors are buying exchange-traded funds at a fast pace, even though many don’t fully understand them, according to a survey from Charles Schwab.

Fidelity Charitable has created an array of seven investment options offering diversification across asset classes and risk. In addition, Fidelity Charitable has created an online tool to help investors make investment decisions.

Credit Suisse has launched the Credit Suisse Global Equity Market Neutral ETN, its fifth alternative exchange-traded note.

Employees who are automatically enrolled in target-date funds when they are signed up for a 401(k) plan are very likely to stick with the target date investment strategy for the long haul, according to a study conducted by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).

Putnam Investments has developed a new website for financial advisers featuring sophisticated, open-architecture portfolio modeling tools (www.putnam.com/advisor). The site builds upon a series of practice management recommendations, links to Putnam’s social media sites, articles and videos of the company’s investment professionals discussing their investment outlook and the firm’s analytical tool FundVisualizer, which can model a portfolio from a universe of more than 11,000 mutual funds and ETFs.

Morningstar will begin ranking and researching managed ETF portfolios by the end of the year, the research firm announced at its second annual ETF Invest Conference in Chicago Thursday.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index rose 0.3% in August, following a 0.6% gain in July and a 0.3% increase in June.

Long-Term funds netted $2.13 billion in the week ended Sept. 14, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Financial advisors and their wealthier clients will have a lot more separately managed alternative accounts to consider next year, according to a new study by Aite Group, the Boston-based independent financial industry research and advisory firm.

A new report by the Investment Company Institute shows that over the past four months, a staggering $75 billion has been withdrawn from equity mutual funds.

Mutual funds’ fair value procedures are holding up amid the unprecedented market volatility that has resulted from economic uncertainty, Middle East unrest and environmental disasters, Deloitte found in its Ninth Annual Fair Value Pricing Survey. This year’s survey queried executives at 79 asset management firms around the world with more than 3,300 fund offerings with $2.6 trillion in assets under management.

Fears over a possible economic slowdown, sovereign debt and not enough capitalization at U.S. financial institutions sent the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) Risk Index up 2.5 points to 110.5 in the second quarter. This is very close to the previous high reached in the third quarter of 2010.

Investment Company Institute report finds that an astonishing $178 billion has moved out of mutual funds and equity ETFs in the past 30 months. Could this dramatic exodus from stocks mark the volatile market’s bottom and great buying opportunity for advisors and investors?

Developing economies of the world are still showing robust growth, but that may not be enough to lift the sagging economies of the developed world, which still account for 60% of combined global economic output, warns Lin Yifu, a World Bank senior vice president and chief economist.

August’s mutual fund outflows reflected investors’ jittery mood, with money pouring out of most investment categories.

In a period of high market volatility like now, many mutual funds can be capital gains time bombs for investors including those buy-and-hold types who do just as their advisors recommend and sit tight while everyone else is fleeing the market.

News of a possible double-dip recession and extreme stock market volatility prompted 40% of Americans to reduce their spending in the past 60 days, according to the September Bankrate Financial Security Index.

UBS AG updated the loss from its unauthorized trading scandal on Sunday to $2.3 billion from its previous $2 billion estimate, and also provided more details on how the alleged fraud was perpetrated.