Investments

After taking massive losses in 2008, many on Wall Street expected investors in target-date funds to pull out their assets and invest their retirement savings elsewhere. But according to Morningstar Inc., investors have ignored the criticism and made target-date funds the focus of their retirement savings.

Advisors put money on non-U.S. markets leading the global economy out of the recession.

High-yield can offer two things clients desperately want: a decent return and a healthy safety net they can’t get from stocks.

In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, Charles R. Schwab, chairman of Charles Schwab Corp., spelled out the grave danger that the near-zero fed funds rate poses for senior citizens.

SEC May Put Cap on Derivatives Exposure

UMB Fund Services has renamed its Alternative Investment Services division JD Clark & Company, the company said today.

Confidence among millionaire investors rose in March, according to a Spectrem Group monthly survey, even as confidence amongst affluent investors declined.

Health savings accounts (HSAs) are unlikely to cover healthcare costs in retirement unless contribution limits on the plans are raised and interest rates rise, the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) said in a new report.

Fixed and variable annuities sales are very sluggish, while mutual fund sales have taken off.

Asset managers have come a long way since the financial crisis to earn back a significant amount of the revenue and earnings lost since the fourth quarter of 2007.

Advisor confidence in the economy and the stock market improved in March as a majority of advisors said they think unemployment has finally steadied.

Rep-as-advisor managed accounts have been steadily growing in popularity and will continue to do so in the short-term, but Cerulli Associates see growth dampening because of the account’s nondiscretionary nature.

State Street Global Markets’ Investor Confidence Index of 108.0 is up 5.4 points from February’s revised reading of 102.6.

Fidelity’s institutional service organization’s first big initiative is new tools and service upgrades for National Financial broker/dealers to reduce their administrative tasks and help them focus on clients. Fidelity developed the tools after discovering that brokers spend nearly one-third of their time on admin tasks.

In an opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Charles R. Schwab, chairman of Charles Schwab Corp., spells out the grave danger that the near-zero fed funds rate poses for senior citizens. With their purchasing power effectively eviscerated by 76%, retirees are “financially starving,” Schwab says.

Victory Capital Management, the asset management arm of KeyCorp's KeyBank, says it is positioned to quickly expand the assets it manages in collective investment trusts, or CITs, for defined contribution plans, but the effort will not lack challenges.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Jones v. Harris Associates excessive mutual fund fee case Tuesday, essentially vacating the Chicago federal appeals court’s rejection of the case on the basis that such cases can only be heard when they involve fraud.

ING Financial Solutions is launching today a new, simplified variable annuity, called ING Select Opportunities, with much lower fees than its flashier, pre-crash offerings.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Jones v. Harris Associates excessive mutual fund fee case Tuesday, essentially vacating the Chicago federal appeals court’s rejection of the case on the basis that such cases can only be heard when they involve fraud. The Supreme Court has asked the lower court to reconsider the case.

With investors more prone to invest in alternatives in the wake of the financial crisis, they might want to consider commodities, according to an article written by three university professors and the managing director of the CFA institute in the upcoming issue of Journal of Investing.