Investments

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%.

NEW YORK-Unemployment may still be 9%. Single-family home starts may be down again. But the outlook from the corner office of fund managers is increasingly sunny.

Whether they call it "aggressive recruiting" or poaching, financial services companies across the board are predicting the practice will intensify in the coming year, forcing many of them to sweeten their offers and actively seek out skilled professionals both within and outside the industry.

Advisor sales productivity reached $228,684 in 2010, up from $216,738 in 2009, according to Kehrer-LIMRA’s founder Ken Kehrer and chief operating officer Scott Stathis, at the 2011 Bank Insurance and Secruities conference in Hollywood, Fla. Hiring also is up.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- Brent crude oil futures for April 2011 delivery ended the week’s trading session at $115.78 a barrel on the ICE Futures Exchange at close Friday evening.

LIMRA released a list of its top 20 writers of overall total annuities, variable annuities and fixed annuities for 2010.

Even if you outsource stock picking, or buy only mutual funds, somebody somewhere has to select stocks.

The dispersion of performance between best and worst performers narrows.

But only 10% think blue-chip stocks will be the best performers this year.

Municipal bonds have notched a good week as governments’ willingness to refrain from borrowing means investors with money to spend mostly have to chase existing bonds in the secondary market.

Certified public accountants expressed their highest level of optimism on the U.S. economy since the third quarter of 2007, according to the latest AICPA/UNC Quarterly Economic Outlook Survey, in which 1,168 CPAs were queried. In addition, the CPAs’ expectations for hiring and capital spending on IT and other areas improved slightly.

Thirty-six percent of the 1,019 investors that Edward Jones surveyed said they believe technology will be the best-performing sector in 2011, and 31% are betting on gold.

Global X Funds has launched the Global X FTSE Argentina 20 ETF, rounding out its suite of Latin American exchange-traded funds.

Equity funds see inflows of $2.53 billion, down from $6.42 billion the week before.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday unanimously agreed to propose amendments to its Rule 2a-7 that would remove all credit rating references from the rule, which requires money market funds to invest in high-quality and very liquid short-term securities.

Mahoney, who has worked for the San Mateo, Calif., based investment manager since 1993, is “now responsible for overseeing and mentoring the firm’s internal sales staff, and will also seek ways to enhance sales techniques to make them more salient in the digital age.”

Companies may need to provide more information to assess climate change risks and opportunities.

The Kansas City, Mo., based institutional asset manager announced Wednesday it hired Michael Hedstrom as a senior vice president of marketing.

But their outlook is not positive on government bonds and the job outlook, a Towers Watson survey finds.

According to survey results released Wednesday, when RBC Capital Markets asked 100 state and local government experts at The Bond Buyer Texas Public Finance Conference last month whether they would buy municipal bonds for their own portfolios, all 100 said yes.