Investments

Thin Demand For Light Supply

A 1.7% drop in the Nikkei is not devastation. Many advisors are already suggesting that by Monday morning, the financial markets will have priced it in as a minor bump in a global bull market.

The U.S. and Singapore were co-valedictorians in a new Morningstar report released Friday as both countries earned "A" grades on a report card that measured the overall experience of mutual fund investors based on a variety of factors including taxation, transparency and investor protection.

Lazard Asset Management has launched two new fixed income funds, the Lazard Emerging Markets Debt Portfolio and the Lazard U.S. Municipal Portfolio.

Loomis Sayles has launched the Loomis Sayles Absolute Strategies Bond Fund, which Natixis Global Advisors will distribute in the U.K. and Europe.

The fund will invest in money market and investment-grade debt.

Tax-exempt money market funds saw modest inflows of $639.9 million in the week ended March 7, increasing total net assets to $323.67 billion, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

The fund will invest in money market and investment-grade debt.

The campaign showcases three of the firm’s top-performing funds.

Variable annuities with guaranteed living benefit riders surged up 78% in the past two years to more than $521 billion in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a new LIMRA report charting the sales prowess of more than 95% of the variable annuity sector.

U.S. investors have warmed to exchange-traded funds in a big way over the past five years and their growing familiarity with the expanding variety of products available helped pushed the total value of U.S. ETF assets over the $1 trillion mark last month, according to a report from State Street Global Advisors.

According to PIMCO, consultants said that active management makes the most sense for all asset classes, except large-cap U.S. equities.

As exchange-traded funds have gained in popularity, confusion has grown over how to pick the ETF right for investor portfolios. Now Charles Schwab has stepped up to fill in the gap.

Fixed indexed and income annuity sales shook off a lackluster to start to the year to finish 2010 with some much-needed momentum, according to Beacon Research's latest research.

Fewer hedge funds opened their doors in the fourth quarter, according to HFR Hedge Fund Research.

Concerns about rising oil prices and an end to the stock market rally once quantitative easing ends has caused 40% of hedge fund managers to be bearish on U.S. equities, up from 26% in January, according to the TrimTabs/BarclayHedge Survey of Hedge Fund Managers. And only 26% are bullish, down from 37%.

Sales rose 18% in the fourth quarter to $37.6 billion.

Most of Canada's largest financial services firms have and will continue to invest heavily in IT projects for the foreseeable future to garner more customers and stay ahead of the compliance and regulation curve.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- Nothing that Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner or President Barack Obama can do will prevent the United States economy from coming apart, under the weight of public and private debt.

Variable annuity assets in the U.S. reached an all-time record of $1.5 trillion in 2010, with fourth-quarter sales rises 18% year-over-year to $37.6 billion, the Insured Retirement Institute announced Monday.