Mutual funds

Pension fund managers should consider managing for a total outcome rather than focusing on the returns of individual strategies or asset classes to respond to the volatility and risk now plaguing their plans, according to a paper recently released by State Street Global Advisors.

Van Eck Global has filed for permission from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to create exchange-traded fund share classes of at least one of its five mutual funds.

BlackRock is looking to do some good while doing well at the same time with its latest values-based exchange-traded fund focusing on human rights.

The San Francisco company has not made it easy for fund families to work through its online platform, featuring five incompatible sites. That's about to change, with an Investment Manager Gateway.

Legg Mason, Inc. today reported preliminary assets under management of $638 billion as of February 29, 2012, an increase of up 1% and some $7 billion over January’s AUM. The firm managed $677 billion last March.

Nuveen Fund Advisors and GuideStone Funds garnered the top group honors at the 2012 U.S. Lipper Fund Awards.

The San Francisco company has not made it easy for fund families to work through its online platform, featuring five incompatible sites. That's about to change, with an Investment Manager Gateway.

Palm Beach Gardens, Fl.-based Lighthouse Partners, a fund-of-hedge-funds and managed account investment adviser, has taken a minority stake in 361 Capital, a Denver-based provider of alternative investment mutual funds, separate accounts, and limited partnerships to institutions, financial intermediaries, and high-net-worth investors.

''The new normal is that we are in transition, we are in transformation and we don't know where we're heading,'' according to Lazaro Campos, chief executive of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.

So you want to tap into the global markets and find new opportunities for growth.

New York-based Water Island Capital is reopening its $2.95 billion Arbitrage Fund, which has been closed to new investors since July 19, 2010, on March 15, according to a Securities & Exchange Commission filing.

Thanks to stagnant interest rates and lingering worries over the Eurozone and other developed markets, the exchange traded fund market in February grew 3.9%, or more than $44 billion assets, over the previous month, according to a snapshot report released by State Street Global Advisors.

The exchange-traded product market reached $1.72 trillion of assets at the end of February, up 12.8% year to date, according to the ETF Landscape report issued by the BlackRock Investment Institute.

Charles Schwab Investment Management, Inc. has filed paperwork with the Securities & Exchange Commission to launch active exchange-traded funds, which are getting a lot of buzz courtesy of PIMCO’s latest offering and iShares’ proposed fund.

Nuveen Fund Advisors and GuideStone Funds garnered the top group honors at the 2012 U.S. Lipper Fund Awards last night.

Investors are much savvier about retirement planning than commonly thought, at least when it comes to target-date funds, according to a research note from investment management company Vanguard.

On the heels of Bill Gross’ latest active exchange-traded fund, BlackRock has thrown its hat into the active ETF space with a proposed offering of its own.

PIMCO’s All Asset All Authority institutional fund received a Gold rating this week from Morningstar Analyst Ratings. The PIMCO fund, managed by sub-advisor Rob Arnott of Research Affiliates, “had its many moving parts moving in sync in 2011,” according to a report by Morningstar analyst Kevin McDevitt.

PIMCO’s All Asset All Authority institutional fund received a Gold rating this week from Morningstar Analyst Ratings—the only fund to do so this week.

Exchange-traded fund sponsor WisdomTree has launched a corporate bond ETF covering emerging market issuers across Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East.