Investments

It’s often noted that a company’s stock gets a bump in value when the company is voted into the Standard & Poor's 500 index, because index fund managers have to buy it. And if a company gets booted out, the same managers must sell.

ING’s U.S. retirement division is attempting to pursue the small- and mid-sized defined contribution business through the banking channel and with a convenience payroll strategy.

Sure, the economy is looking weaker these days, but fears about a double-dip recession are “overblown,” according to researchers at the money management firm Lord Abbett.

There is a great divide in the economic outlook of the 18% of the population earning $100,000 or more and the 50% earning $50,000 or less, the Consumer Reports Sentiment Index shows.

Emerging Global Advisors, the sub-advisor to the EGShares family of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) this week launched a suite of sector-specific, emerging markets ETFs.

I guess if you wait long enough, everything that once was will come back to us again. Even the bad stuff.

Global long-term fund flows through April reached $270 billion, according to Strategic Insight’s “Global Mutual Fund Review April 2011, New & Top Selling Funds, Leading Managers.”

Fidelity Investments on Wednesday announced the launch of four Fidelity Defined Maturity Funds, a series of four actively managed municipal income funds. The funds seek to bridge the gap between individual bonds and bond funds and, therefore, fill a gap in municipal bond investing, Fidelity said.

Conventional wisdom these days suggest that the U.S. dollar remains a safe haven for investors compared to the euro, which is under considerable pressure due to the growing debt crisis facing Greece and a few other European countries. But at least one analyst contends investors shouldn't be so quick to assume these macroeconomic developments are necessarily good for the U.S. dollar.

Morgan Keegan & Co. agreed to a $200 million settlement with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and five state securities regulators that resolves a civil case brought against the firm last year accusing top executives of defrauding investors by artificially inflating the value of mortgage-backed securities in several of its mortgage bond funds.

Despite a skittish U.S. economy, most commercial real estate investors remain upbeat and cautiously optimistic about the industry’s future, according to the PwC Real Estate Investor Survey. In fact, the majority continues to invest in all sectors of commercial real estate, as they continue to see signs that the industry’s fundamentals are stabilizing.

Fidelity Investments on Wednesday announced the launch of four Fidelity Defined Maturity Funds, a series of four actively managed municipal income funds. The funds seek to bridge the gap between individual bonds and bond funds and, therefore, fill a gap in municipal bond investing, Fidelity said.

Treating employees well is savvy management, according to “socially-responsible” investors such as Jerome Dodson, founder of the Parnassus Workplace Fund. And for several years, the independent research firm, Russell Investments, has reported that the benefits of happy employees may actually show up in better stock returns.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC will pay $153.6 million to settle charges that it misled investors in a complex mortgage securities transaction just as the housing market was starting to plummet, the Securities and Exchange Commission said.

DTCC Insurance & Retirement Services has launched a new analytic reporting service for insurance carriers and broker-dealers that sell annuities.

In bull markets, many investors may overlook the importance of dividends. But when markets become more tentative or start to slump, dividends can look a lot more attractive and one S&P analyst found some international funds investors should be watching.

Henry Kaufman, one of the first economists to earn the now overused sobriquet “Dr. Doom” because of his generally bearish views on interest rates during the 1970s and '80s, is now warning that the conglomeratization of financial institutions, the continued securitization of non-marketable assets and the extreme leveraging which led to the most recent crash leave the global financial system vulnerable to new and potentially more devastating crises.

With only 51% of Americans believing they will have enough money to enjoy a comfortable retirement, an all-time low, the Country Financial Security Index fell one point in June to 63.7.

Deutsche Bank has rebranded five exchange-traded target-date funds, previously known as the TDX Independence Funds, as the db-X Target Date Funds.

Invesco PowerShares Capital Management this week introduced a “suite” of nine new exchange-traded funds (ETFs) which it is calls Fundamental Pure Style ETFs, based upon the Research Affiliates Fundamental Index (RAFI).