Investments

Tomorrow is the one-year birthday of the market low. How are we doing? Comments from JPMorgan Funds, BlackRock and more, plus the week’s reports.

A fund for retirees and near-retirees from JPMorgan, the J.P. Morgan Income Builder Fund, aims to deliver institutional-type risks by investing in collateralized mortgage obligations, real estate investment trusts, high-yield debt, convertible bonds and emerging markets equities.

Nearly 70% of defined contribution balances have returned to levels prior to the stock market slump of 2008 and 2009, according to a survey by Mercer, a provider of benefits administration outsourcing.

One advisor warned that keeping clients happy should top performance chasing.

Being owned by a bank has handcuffed many mutual fund units. Just don't tell that to JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s J.P. Morgan Funds.

$420B in Retirement Plan, Endowment Assets Expected to Change Hands in 2010

Baltimore asset management titan T. Rowe Price reported its executives took compensation cuts in 2009, led by CEO James Kennedy, who had his compensation package slashed by 17%.

Investors showed uncanny calm, inertia or perhaps even malaise during the recession, with a scant 1% selling out of equity funds at the height of the market volatility in October 2008, Vanguard found.

Electronic trading in the equity markets has grown dramatically in recent years and is expected to continue growing, according to a new survey of institutional equity traders and technologists. RBC Capital Markets, Bradley Katsuyama, proprietary trading, electronic trading

Says Banks Will 'Skim the Cream’

Investors showed uncanny calm, inertia or perhaps even malaise during the recession, with a scant 1% selling out of equity funds at the height of the market volatility in October 2008, Vanguard found.

Baltimore asset management titan T. Rowe Price reported its executives took compensation cuts in 2009, led by CEO James Kennedy, who had his compensation package slashed by 17%.

Nine percent of executives in the finance, insurance and real estate sector plan to hire full-time staff members in the next quarter, a new survey by Robert Half International found. Overall, 10% are planning on hiring, and only 6% are planning layoffs.

The fixed investment mandates of mutual funds and the pressures put on portfolio managers to deliver short-term gains take a head-turning toll on gains. Just take a look at the 20% annualized gains of Berkshire Hathaway over its 45 years of existence.

Long-term mutual funds gained another $10.97 billion in sales in the week ended Feb. 24, the Investment Company Institute said. Sales over the past 50 weeks have been consistently positive and near half a trillion, or $487 billion.

It’s impossible to completely protect against inflation but some old asset classes, and one new product, can help.

Merrill Lynch’s high account minimums could banish many BofA clients to a call center, taking their advisors’ main source of production with them.

But, even a few bankruptcies can set a bad precedent.

Royal Bank of Canada’s wealth management division reported net income of $213 million for the first quarter ended Jan. 31, up 72% from the $91 million from a year earlier, partly due to higher fee-based client assets and some accounting adjustments.

In the face of the shrinking asset management landscape and soaring distribution costs, not to mention the home-office centralization of brokerage firms’ investment choices, fund companies need highly accomplished national accounts teams, according to a new kasina report, “Excellence in Distribution: National Accounts.”