Investments

Putnam Investments plans to continue to aggressively expand its array of products even as market volatility has forced some competitors to retrench.

Wealthy individuals now hold more of their assets in IRAs than employer-based plans.

Merrill Edge hopes to crowd out Fidelty and Schwab by not paying advisers brokerage fees, only for referrals.

A two-year extension to the Build America Bonds program, as well as extensions to a handful of other bond provisions set to expire at the end of the year, remain in legislative limbo as Senate Democratic leaders this week continue attempts to produce a tax bill that they can pass.

Citi Capital Advisors, Citigroup’s alternative asset management platform, may seek $1.5 billion for private equity this year and $750 million for hedge funds, and an additional $1 billion of fundraising for hedge funds is targeted next year, this person said.

Citigroup Inc. plans to raise more than $3 billion for its private-equity and hedge funds, a person familiar with the matter said Friday.

The distinction between accumulation and distribution is the key to your clients’ understanding target date funds.

While April’s sales couldn’t compete with March’s rocketing success, quarterly fees buoyed overall performance.

The sovereign debt crisis in Europe is coupling with the general malaise in financial markets to make life easier for tax-free money market funds by boosting key short-term interest rates.

NYSE Technologies on Thursday will introduce a service that displays up-to-the-minute statistics on how fast it delivers details on orders and transactions to customers.

Investor confidence has declined, but concerns over the European economy appear to be easing, a monthly Bank of America Merrill Lynch survey of fund managers found.

Invesco PowerShares plans to launch its second exchange-traded fund devoted to Build America Bonds, highlighting both the proliferation of municipal ETFs and the growing importance of taxable state and local government debt.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is stepping up its enforcement efforts in the municipal securities market for the first time in more than a decade, with a staff of roughly 30 attorneys charged with investigating and trying muni and public pension fund cases.

The SEC will also require glidepath graphics and asset allocation taglines in advertisements—a new twist for funds that really aren’t as easy as they look.

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted 5:0 Wednesday to require target-date funds to do a better job of explaining the purpose of their retirement date, how their asset-allocation glidepaths change over time, and, in a new twist, to include easy-to-understand visuals in ads.

As of May 31, 885 exchange-traded funds in the United States had $748 billion in assets, down 5.5% from a month earlier.

The ICI is asking both high-frequency traders and dark pools for more information—and turning to the SEC for help.

With the global debt crisis set to corral investment banking's bull run, it's questionable whether the largest lenders can compensate for a resultant decline in a top source of profits.

Investor-adviser relations are considerably improving, Fidelity Investments and National Financial found in a survey of 350 investors and 218 brokers and advisers.

Mutual fund investors preferred bonds, while gold set the standard for ETF inflows.