Investments

A tiny hedge fund scans thousands of articles to gauge investor sentiment—when there is an optimistic shift in tone, it buys and waits for others to pile on.

Quarterly fee payments save the day, as new product sales suffer from a market dip.

The Hartford Mutual Funds will permanently reduce fees on six of its fixed income funds, effective Nov. 1. The biggest reduction is in the gross expenses on share Class A on The Hartford High Yield Fund, which are being reduced by 15 basis points to 1.25%. The other funds are seeing reductions in fees of between two basis points and 10 basis points.

Standard & Poor’s has launched a new U.S. Mutual Fund Excellence Awards program to recognize those funds that consistently achieve the highest ranking in S&P’s five-star rating system.

ETFdb.com, an information source and database of exchange traded funds, has launched a free conversion tool that allows investors and advisors to map current mutual-fund holdings to their equivalent ETFs, which typically have cheaper expense ratios and are easier to trade.

Looking to fill a growing need for advisers for its brokerage business at a reasonable cost, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. has been training promising candidates in-house, in a departure from standard bank practice.

The E*Trade fund supermarket now includes 18 funds from USAA Management, 12 of them fixed income. USAA manages $43 billion in mutual funds and $6 billion in managed accounts.

Money managers buck August’s pessimism to enjoy a rosy September.

New tool approximates costlier mutual fund portfolios in exchange traded funds.

The Basel III bank capital requirements proposed earlier this month threaten to eviscerate the supply of eligible investments for tax-free money market funds — an industry already struggling with a severe supply shortage.

Mornginstar ETF Director Scott Burns said the firm might remove leveraged and inverse ETFs from its star rating system.

The exit of capital from mutual funds in the United States has slowed down, but showed signs of picking up steam again this month.

Brown Brothers expanded its relationship with OppenheimerFunds to provide middle and back office services through a new “lift-out” agreement for a $155 billion division.

Fifty-seven percent of money managers view the market as undervalued, Russell Investments found in its latest survey, of 170 senior-level managers. This is the second-highest percentage in survey history. Only 7% of managers believe markets are overvalued.

Brown Brothers Harriman Trust, based in New York City, launched the BBH Core Select mutual fund in 1998 as a small trailer fund to help younger members of its wealthy families manage smaller sums.

Morningstar may remove leveraged and inverse exchange-traded funds from its star rating system and track them separately, Scott Burns, the firm’s ETF director, told attendees at Morningstar’s ETF conference last week.

A fund devoted to investing in Build America Bonds would have a tough time avoiding debt backed by the states of California and Illinois altogether. Eaton Vance is doing its best.

The exit of capital from mutual funds in the United States has slowed down, but showed signs of picking up steam again this month.

Asset allocations won’t change dramatically over the next year, but as money leaves conservative investments, it will move into emerging markets and international funds.

The company announced Wednesday it launched seven exchange-traded funds based on Russell indexes.