Investments

In an effort to develop jumpstart its exchange-traded fund business, Russell Investments announced Wednesday it plans to buy U.S. One Inc., a registered investment advisor and ETF provider.

Assets held in domestic exchange-traded funds increased 28% last year to $994.7 billion.

The sub-advisors who will construct the fund’s regional sub-portfolios hail from offices including those in Brazil, India, Japan and South Korea.

Fidelity Investments on Wednesday announced a new unified managed account for high-net-worth investors, the Fidelity Personalized Portfolios, which provides daily tax analysis.

The investment platform is aimed at investors with at least $200,000 in investable assets.

Only 62% of Americans have a basic financial literacy level.

MarketRiders has released a 2010 Portfolio Report Card showing that stock and bond market portfolios returned between 4 to 16 percent.

There are several reasons for the long-term performance success of Vanguard Group’s GNMA Fund Investor Shares, but one of the simplest is this: It doesn’t have high fees weighing down its returns.

In the last two weeks of December, investors placed $507 million into U.S. equity funds, the first positive inflows since just before the Flash Crash in early May.

The Raymond James executive wrote, “the current ‘buying stampede’ is now 90 sessions long, making it the longest one ever recorded in my notes of more than 40 years. Combine that with many other ‘finger to wallet’ indicators suggesting caution and I am currently just sitting.”

Assets held in domestic exchange-traded funds increased 28% last year to $994.7 billion.

It may turn out to be a glass-half-full kind of year, after all.

The Conference Board Measure of CEO Confidence rallied to 62 in the fourth quarter, up from 50 in the third quarter.

Morningstar reported that it has found that managers who invest in their own funds remain invested more than twice as long.

According to a survey, four in five corporations could drop money market funds from their portfolios if funds are required to shift to a floating net asset value reporting structure.

Fixed annuities sales were steady at $1.1 billion, whereas variable annuities gained $100 million from a month earlier ending November at $1.5 billion, according to data from Kehrer-LIMRA.

Strong sales over the past year prove that Americans are looking for guaranteed income.

NEW YORK-The U.S. economy will muddle through even as domestic stocks rake in double-digit percentage returns for the third straight year, said Robert C. Doll, the chief equity strategist for fundamental equities at BlackRock, in a breakfast briefing in New York Tuesday.

Equity funds delivered 16.57% in 2010, with more than one-third of the gains, 6.43%, coming in during the last five weeks of the year, Lipper said.

The mutual fund industry typically focuses on weekly and monthly fund flow figures.