Mutual funds

State Street Global Advisors, the asset management business of State Street Corporation, has announced changes to the indices and names of five financial industry SPDR ETFs.

Having made changes to the fund’s investment capacity, the $6.6 billion Eaton Vance Macro Absolute Return Fund is reopened to additional investments.

At the start of October, the Investment Company Institute announced it was going global.

FPA has launched the International Value Strategy portfolio, with plans to roll out a mutual fund version in the near future.

David Blaine is an illusionist, often referred to as a modern-day Houdini.

Here are the photos of the people who attended Money Management Executive's 2011 NOVA Awards presentation -- and the 2011 NOVA Awards winners. Below, see Doug Chittendon, President of TIAA-CREF, accepting the Innovation in Customer Experience Platinum Award from SourceMedia EVP and Managing Director Bruce Morris. For the complete slide show, click here.

Ashmore Investment Management, an emerging markets specialist headquartered in London, has introduced the Emerging Markets Small Cap Equity Fund.

Investors withdrew $5 billion from U.S. stock and bond long-term funds in September, Strategic Insight reports. This was a "significant improvement" from August, when open-end and closed-end mutual funds (excluding ETFs and VA sub-accounts) were hit with $33.6 billion in outflows following the downgrade of the U.S. debt rating.

Mutual fund managers prided themselves on sticking to their investment mandates early on in the financial crisis of 2008. This, even as the average U.S. stock fund fell nearly 30% in value. They counseled investors to do the same. Three years later, there is a new direction for funds: the flexibility to go anywhere, to pay closer attention to macroeconomic and market trends, and to even hunker down in cash.

Thirty years ago,Russell Investments changed the landscape of how fund firms could evaluate managerial performance, by launching broad benchmarks of stock performance in the United States.

In the three years since the financial crisis hit, investors have remained cautious, but their tolerance for risk has actually held steady, the Investment Company Institute said Thursday.

Long-term mutual funds had total outflows of $10.95 billion in the week ended Oct. 5, the Investment Company Institute said. This was up substantially from the $5.68 billion of outflows in the previous week ended Sept. 28.

Investors withdrew $5 billion from U.S. stock and bond long-term funds in September, Strategic Insight reports.

Gemini Fund Services is expanding its portfolio, building out its Northern Lights Fund Trust I shared mutual fund trust with the addition of three new funds from Ascendant Advisors.

While the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 14.3% in the third quarter, many mutual fund categories performed worse, according to Lipper.

BlackRock has launched three mutual funds that invest in alternative investments, the BlackRock Commodity Strategies, BlackRock Emerging Markets Long/Short and BlackRock Global Long/Short Credit funds.

Investors have pulled nearly $80 billion this year out of mutual funds that invest in U.S. stocks. That's the tally after investors yanked $5.5 billion from all types of mutual funds in the last week of September.

While the boards of directors of mutual funds are not responsible for managing risk, they still have a key role to play in overseeing investment and operational risks, according to a white paper just released by the Investment Company Institute and Independent Board of Directors.

Litman Gregory Fund Advisors has launched the Litman Gregory Masters Alternative Strategies Fund, a multi-manager, multi-strategy fund that offers investors diversified exposure to absolute return-oriented strategies.

Russell Investments has launched four additional investment discipline exchange-traded funds, the new offerings focused on small-cap indexes. Russell’s investment discipline indexes take indexing to the next level by aiming to mirror the way equity managers invest.