Investments

Life insurance sales through banks, which set records in 2010, are now trending downward sales fell 30% in the first quarter, according to research firm Kehrer-LIMRA.

CHICAGO -- Just last month BlackRock’s Bob Doll told a room full of almost 2,000 advisers at the IMCA Annual Conference in Las Vegas that he believes the U.S. will continue to outperform developing markets and outperform Europe and Japan. “Investors should be overweight the U.S.” he said.

Slowing economic growth abroad combined with the Eurozone debt crisis pushed commodities lower in May after months of strong, sustained gains.

Dallas-based Highland Funds' Long/Short Healthcare Fund this week received a five-star rating from Morningstar which ranks the mutual fund among the top 10% of funds in the healthcare category.

The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index rose to from -47.1 to -45.9 in the week ended June 5, the third straight week it has risen and its best reading since the end of April.

CHICAGO -- Seeking to make it easier for financial planners and investors to analyze the vast mutual fund universe, Morningstar will soon launch forward-looking, analyst-driven fund ratings.

Are municipal bonds coming back into favor? Some industry analysts seem to think so.

Seeking to make it easier for financial planners and investors to analyze the vast mutual fund universe, Morningstar announced Thursday that it would soon launch forward-looking, analyst-driven fund ratings.

Assets flowed out of ETFs in May, the first time flows have reversed direction since August 2010, according to State Street Global Advisors, which just released its latest Snapshot report tracking ETF funds.

Lord Abbett and Wilshire Associates have partnered to launch Pro Active Income Solutions, an actively managed approach designed to deliver income for the independent advisory market. The solution combines Wilshire’s dynamic asset-allocation capabilities and Lord Abbett’s comprehensive suite of fixed income mutual funds.

Global X Funds has launched the Global X SuperDividend ETF, an exchange-traded fund that offers exposure to 100 global companies that rank among the highest dividend-yielding equity securities in the world.

New York-based exchange traded fund (ETF) provider Global X Funds this week rolled out a new ETF for investors who are looking to buy funds comprised of stocks that consistently deliver solid dividends to their shareholders.

A software tools company and a maker of high-performance servers said they set a new record in the speed of pricing options contracts.

Long-term mutual funds reaped $2.83 billion in inflows in the week ended June 1, the Investment Company Institute said.

The Federal Reserve will not officially launch a third round of quantitative easing to help boost the flagging economy, but will rely instead on a “magical weapon” -- the language of its policy statements to try to keep interest rates historically low for an extended period, PIMCO money management titan Bill Gross said Wednesday at the Morningstar Investment Conference.

Investors concerned that the equities markets and the economy seem to be hitting a soft patch might think about looking at stocks that have a long history of paying dividends.

I just got back from my yearly pilgrimage to the Northern California regional conference in San Francisco, which is always one of the best financial planning meetings of the year, and two interesting nuggets caught my eye.

Assets flowed out of ETFs in May, the first time flows have reversed direction since August 2010, according to State Street Global Advisors, which just released its latest Snapshot report tracking ETF funds.

Rule changes brought on by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act are expected to produce the most change in the way trading in contracts involving interest-rate commitments.

Following passage of a new state law aimed at assuaging investor fears of bankruptcy, the city of Ecorse next week will sell $9.3 million of financial recovery bonds, making it one of Michigan’s only municipalities to enter the bond market while under state-controlled receivership.