Mutual funds

The operators of the Hong Kong Exchanges are taking steps to enter the index business, toward creating benchmarks of the performance of stocks on mainland China and in emerging markets, such as Russia, Brazil, India and South Africa.

Fidelity Investments has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Dec. 1 to offer a broad range of domestic and international equity and fixed income exchange-traded funds – putting to rest longtime speculations as to when, not if, Fidelity would enter the ETF market.

Here’s why it might make sense to diversify into some Asian mutual funds, according to analysts at S&P Capital IQ: While Europe’s growth will be hampered by debt turmoil in the next year, growth in Asia is expected to continue to exceed that of the United States.

But most of that money went back into bond funds and hybrid funds, which took in a combined $16.3 billion for the month.

Equity-income funds provide a buffer against extreme market volatility.

Long-term mutual funds took in $1.4 billion in the week ended Nov. 22, according to the Investment Company Institute.

NYSE Euronext, in partnership with Bloomberg New Energy Finance, is launching three “clean energy” stock indexes. The three indexes will be focused on performance of clean energy firms around the globe. The intent is to track public companies “most active in the world's historic shift to low-carbon energy.’’

Vanguard Group founder John C. Bogle said Wednesday that Republication presidential candidates’ pledge to not raise taxes as any part of a solution to the nation’s $1.2 trillion annual fiscal deficit “makes no sense.”

Investors’ continuing obsession with purchasing Treasury bonds is a sign of ‘irrational exuberance,’ says the chairman of investment manager T. Rowe Price when 10-year yields are under 2.0%.

"Emerging markets are just a niche asset class" persistently remains as one of the five biggest myths about investing in emerging markets, said John Flint, chief executive officer of HSBC Global Asset Management.

Jon B. Lovelace of The Capital Group passed away Wednesday at age 84. In 1951, Lovelace joined Capital Group, which his father, Jonathan Bell Lovelace, founded.

The International Securities Exchange said Thursday that it intended to provide venture capital to the exchange-traded product industry.

When it comes to mutual fund wholesaling, social media is a young man's game. Sales and distribution today are still all about in-person connections.

Total inflows to long-term mutual funds were $836 million for the week ended Nov. 9, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Global X Funds has launched the Global X Social Media Index ETF (SOCL), which it says is the first ETF that will globally focus on social media companies. The fund will cover companies that provide social networking, file sharing and other web-based media applications.

At a time when asset managers are increasingly questioning modern portfolio theory and static Morningstar style boxes, the Chicago research giant has announced its new "Analyst Ratings" to augment its 1- to 5-star ratings.

More than $1.2 trillion has been redeemed from equity mutual funds since September 2008, and retail outflows year-to-date through September have surpassed $89 billion—on pace to be greater than all of the money that fled mutual funds in 2008, said Ron O’Hanley, president of asset management and corporate services at Fidelity Investments.

"Investors are running scared, from fear to fear,” said Brad Durham, managing director of EPFR, a global fund tracking firm, during an address at the Fund Forum USA’s Global Fund Distribution Summit.

Nasdaq OMX Group and a unit of Canada’s TMX Group said they are developing a family of capital markets indices based on U.S. Treasury instruments that will be rebalanced daily, instead of monthly.

Russell Investments has launched three international equity “factor” exchange-traded funds designed to provide investors with focused exposure to fundamental risk factors—namely low beta, low volatility and high momentum. The funds complement Russell’s existing 10 domestic factor ETFs.