Investments

Investigation might redefine insider trading.

Cutler Capital Management has launched the Cutler Absolute Return Fund, which aims to provide institutional investors with positive returns, regardless of the market direction.

As it readies for a massive pruning of its mutual fund family, Columbia Management Investment Advisers is promising a stronger, more affordable lineup.

Sales of annuities through banks in September lost their momentum after hitting a peak for the year in March.

A survey of affluent investors by research firm TNS shows that the TNS Investor Confidence Index rose to 116 in October, its highest level since hitting 129 in 2007. Its lowest point was 81 in October 2008.

According to LIMRA’s Guaranteed Income Annuities report released on Monday, women buy six of every 10 immediate annuity contracts, a significant chunk of the $250 billion annuitization market.

Absolute-return funds may only comprise $140 billion, a scant 1.2% of the $11.26 trillion in mutual funds, but that will grow to 10% to 15% over the next decade, predicts Putnam Investments President and Chief Executive Officer Robert Reynolds.

Stephen Wedel, an LPL adviser and founding partner of Four Seasons Wealth Management in St. Louis, is gathering a lot of assets by investing his clients' money in alternatives, including non-traded real estate investment trusts, oil-and-gas limited partnerships, managed futures and private equity.

Skittish investors withdrew a stunning $3.107 billion from municipal bond mutual funds in the week ending Nov. 17 — the single worst week of outflows and the largest departure of cash in 10 years, according to weekly fund flow data from Lipper FMI.

Fixed annuities give way to variable annuity and mutual fund sales, but September was nothing to write home about.

Many active fund managers get paid to predict where the market is headed—and to get there a step or two ahead of their rivals.But the management of Allianz Global Investors’ Global Investment Solutions Conservative Allocation mutual fund has shunned that approach, and in doing so achieved remarkable success.

AllianceBernstein has launched the AllianceBernstein International Discovery Equity portfolio, a bottom-up fund that will look for small- and mid-cap companies outside the U.S. with strong prospective earnings growth, valuation and management.

Despite the growing argument that buy-and-hold investing and diversification no longer make sense, Burton Malkiel, Princeton economics professor and author of “A Random Walk Down Wall Street,” writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Thursday that is absolutely not true.

How are market conditions? Where are things headed? It all depends on who you listen to and whose surveys you trust.

Mark Notkin, portfolio manager of the $12.8 billion Fidelity Capital & Income Fund, the best-performing high-yield fund in the past five years, says the rally in junk bonds is over. His fund has delivered an average of 9.9% a year and is up 14% this year.

Erik Weisman, investment officer and portfolio manager at MFS Investment Management, had one question for journalists gathered at the firm’s 21st annual investment outlook: “Where’s the V?”

When it comes to hedge funds winning institutional business, the amount of resources dedicated to client service means everything and more, a study of mid-sized firms has concluded.

Asset managers are in a race to develop products that provide guaranteed retirement income, effectively duplicating annuities.

Franklin Templeton Investments announced Wednesday it has entered into a strategic relationship with Pelagos Capital Management, LLC, acquiring a 20% equity stake in the firm.

The ­Securities and Exchange Commission would violate the Tower Amendment and the principles of federalism if it applies its proposed rules on asset-backed securities to municipal bonds, 14 market groups warned this week.