Investments

Long-short investing lost a lot less money than equity investments, Credit Suisse says. But is it right for your clients?

The Securities and Exchange Commission has given money market funds a reprieve from following an amendment to money market fund regulations requiring allowing them to approve of the credit rating agencies they must use to determine whether a security is eligible for investment.

The Boston company said Tuesday it is introducing new Retirement Choices target-date portfolios, which are designed to take participants “to” retirement and accommodate the participant who wishes to select another investment strategy at the time of retirement.

Hedge funds finally make it back into the black, returning 0.35% year to date in July, Morningstar says.

One of the Obama administration’s priorities is to get Congress to extend the Build America Bond program and federal officials are convinced BABs will remain a “vibrant market” even if the federal subsidy rate is reduced from its current 35% level, a Treasury Department official said ­Monday.

The Toronot company launched a fund that can invest in junk bonds.

An overwhelming majority of Build America Bond subsidy payments have been paid in full to BAB issuers, suggesting that concerns about offsets are dramatically overblown, according to new data on state issuers compiled by the IRS.

Cash continues flooding into municipal bond mutual funds as retail investors embrace yields many once scorned as being far too low. Municipal bond mutual funds that report their figures weekly posted a net inflow of $927.1 million during the week ended Aug. 18, according to Lipper FMI.

Ameriprise eliminates redundancies in mutual fund coverage following its acquisition of Columbia and subsequent merger with it RiverSource investment unit.

Sector has seen net capital withdrawals in seven of the last eight quarters.

When asked whether municipal bonds can continue their record-setting ways, one of the most common refrains from market participants is: "why not?"

The Congressional Budget Office Thursday upped the estimated cost of the Build America Bond program by $10 billion to $36 billion over 10 years in its new estimates on the fiscal 2010 budget deficit and economic outlook.

The Investment Company Institute reported Wednesday that $5.96 billion were added to mutual funds in the week ended August 11. But U.S. equity funds continued to lose ground for a fifth straight week.

The new municipal underwriting group at U.S. Bancorp Investments continues to expand its ranks, adding Leon Bijou as the group's in-house legal counsel last week and securing Bill Bingham to oversee fixed-rate trading this fall.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today for the first time charged a state–New Jersey–with violating securities fraud laws by failing to disclose to bond investors that it was underfunding its two largest pension plans.

BNP Paribas has pushed to reorganize its corporate and investment banking business in the Americas by making some key staffing swaps within equities, derivatives and structured finance, the firm said yesterday.

On Tuesday Northern Trust's asset management arm, Northern Trust Global Investments, launched a Frontier Markets index fund for institutional investors with exposure to under-represented regions such as Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East, as well as a Asia and the Americas.

For all those young investors out there who are willing to take more risk with their retirement plans because of their longer time horizon, Vanguard has a new fund for you.

While broker-dealers want to manage client assets at the home-office level, advisors want more control of clients’ asset allocation.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board Tuesday said it is contemplating a rule change that would prohibit dealers from underwriting new negotiated or competitive bond issues if they served as the issuer's financial adviser on the transaction.