Investments

Vanguard Group plans to simplify its Target Retirement Funds and certain other funds-of-funds in an effort to improve the products’ international diversification.The Valley Forge, Pa., company plans to replace the funds' three underlying international portfolios with a single broad international stock index fund. Vanguard will also increase the overall international equity exposure of these funds.

Putnam Investments announced Monday it launched a suite of multi-cap equity funds.

Experts say that the new law could push annuities forward.

Vanguard lowered fees on its Nevada 529 as Fidelity adds bank deposit option to its 529 plans.

While municipal market professionals said they do not believe there is systemic risk in state and local government debt, there are underlying issues and credit challenges.

A number of Build America Bond issuers are seeking voluntary closing agreements with the Internal Revenue Service to settle accidental violations of a de minimis premium rule, an IRS official told industry officials in Manhattan yesterday.

Temenos said late Monday that it will acquire Odyssey Financial Technologies, a supplier of front- and middle-office software for private banking, wealth management and investment management.

The funds, which mark the latest enhancement to the Boston investment manager’s equity products, are designed to provide exposure to the full array of U.S. stocks within the value, core/blend and growth style universes.

Sophis said it established a partnership with a cluster, grid and cloud management software firm, to help investment managers disribute "resource-hungry" calculations such as risk simulations.

Most hedge fund categories saw fund outflows through the first seven months of this year, except corporate action and non-trend funds.

Vanguard Group plans to simplify its Target Retirement Funds and certain other funds-of-funds in an effort to improve the products’ international diversification.

Assets in exchange-traded funds have nearly tripled in the past five years, from $302 billion at the end of 2005 to $819 billion at the beginning of this month. Year-to-date 2010 through August, investors have pulled $29 billion from traditional US equity mutual funds, while ETFs have seen $40.8 billion in inflows. Since risk aversion is rampant at present, what is driving this tremendous and curious interest in ETFs? Can this momentum continue to catapult ETFs to a second big wave of growth?

Both remained in positive territory for the week ending Sept. 22, according to research firm Lipper FMI.

In its latest global outlook, Barclays Capital said there is little chance for a double-dip recession and the recent economic slowdown is typical four-to-six quarters into a recovery.

There’s a lot of debate right now about whether putting annuities in 401(k) plans is a good idea or not.

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.