Investments

Flows to long-term stock and bond funds were $6.61 billion in the week ended July 15, the Investment Company Institute said.

DST Systems reported second quarter profits of $48.7 million, a 2% dip from the $49.9 million it earned in the second quarter of 2008.

MFS Investment Management said it will add analysts, relationship management executives and salespeople to its staff, as a result of strong sales this year.

Say what you will about variable annuities; they returned about 6% or more for investors in 2008 when others saw 40% or more of their holdings wiped out, The Wall Street Journal reports. In fact, they were one of the best investments of the past decade, due to their minimum guarantees.

Direxion has launched two leveraged real estate exchange-traded funds, the Direxion Daily Real Estate Bull 3x Shares and the Direxion Daily Real Estate Bear 3x Shares. Both attempt to deliver 300% the daily long and inverse performance of the MSCI U.S. REIT Index.

PIMCO is trimming its exposure to the debt of financial services companies along with high-yield bonds, apparently believing a correction is in the wings.

BlackRock reported second quarter earnings of $218 million, a 20% decrease from the $274 million it earned a year ago. Revenue also fell, by 26%, to $1.03 billion.

The board of directors of Freddie Mac has named Charles E. Haldeman, Jr. chief executive officer and a member of the board of directions. Until June 30, Haldeman was chairman of Putnam Investments, and previously president and CEO of the firm.

Buoyed by strong performance in the first half of the year averaging 9%, hedge funds’ assets under management rose by $142.5 billion, for a total of $1.43 trillion under management, Hedge Fund Research reported Tuesday.

Legg Mason reported earnings of $50.1 million, or 35 cents a share, for the quarter ended June 30, its first fiscal quarter for 2010, compared with a loss of $36.1 million, or 26 cents a share, in the comparable period of 2008. The company handily beat the consensus of earnings of 21 cents a share.

Fixed annuity sales jumped 74% to a record $35.6 billion in the first quarter, according to LIMRA.

Second quarter earnings of companies in the S&P 500 may be down 35.2%, but the results are not as bad as analysts had predicted, Investor’s Business Daily reports. Thus, many fund managers and analysts are expecting growth to return in the fourth quarter and continue into the first half of 2010.

Genworth Life and Annuity Insurance has launched RetireReady One, a streamlined variable annuity aimed at helping advisers more easily personalize a guaranteed income strategy for clients.

Eighty-four percent of financial advisers have had a client who either themselves or whose family member has suffered from Alzheimer’s, and they are looking for resources to help those clients, Fidelity Investments found in a survey of 350 advisers.

Employers are increasingly looking to add index funds, exchange-traded funds or other low-cost selections to their 401(k) plans, according to a survey by Hewitt Associates. Seventeen percent said they are likely to replace at least one of their actively managed funds with an index fund this year, up from 8% who said so a year ago.

The Committee on Capital Markets Regulation released a report by Harvard Law School Professor John C. Coates recommending that mutual fund investors who hold less than 2% of a fund’s shares not be taxed on capital gains until they sell those shares. The current tax scheme puts U.S. funds at a competitive disadvantage, Coates says.

Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin is investigating the sales materials of fund companies that sell leveraged exchange-traded funds.

Janus Replaces Gary Black With Temporary CEO

Working with elderly clients can be challenging, but by networking with the right contacts and involving clients' heirs, some advisers are developing a lucrative and self-feeding business-and fund companies that can provide them with retirement income products that rely on capital preservation rather than aggressive investments will come out the winners.

Of course, it cannot be proved that hedge funds contributed to the financial crisis, as the Department of the Treasury said last week. However, it's more than likely that the top-performing hedge fund managers, those earning a staggering $1 billion a year in 2006, 2007 and 2008, were invested in the mortgage-backed and leveraged instruments that brought the economy to its knees.