Mutual funds

Many of your clients are still shaking on the sidelines, which is typical behavior for small investors in prior post-recession bull markets. One investment manager has a possible solution for getting them back into the market.

Forward Management LLC has just introduced an alternative-strategy mutual fund, and the company's chief executive officer predicts demand for such funds will help fuel a huge leap in the firm's assets.

NEW YORK-Traders feel more optimistic about the stock market than they did six months ago, said Kelli Keough, vice president of active trading at Charles Schwab, at a breakfast briefing Wednesday, to announce the launch of the firm’s new platform for active traders.

Factor Advisors has launched five leverage exchange-traded funds that hold both a bull and a bear position. The initial FactorShares ETFs combine holdings in the S&P 500 Index, U.S. Treasury bonds, gold, oil and the U.S. dollar.

Equity funds net $6.42 billion, with the bulk going to domestic stock funds.

GE Asset Management has completed its appointment of Highland Funds Asset Management as investment advisor for the GE Funds. GE will serve as sub-advisor to all of the funds except the GE Small-Cap Equity Fund, which uses other third-party sub-advisors.

Putnam Investments announced Tuesday that it is developing an absolute return fund for use in variable annuities and other variable insurance products.

67% are overweight the asset class, according to the BoA Merrill Lynch Survey of Fund Managers.

UMB Healthcare Services announced it has seen a significant increase in the number of health spending accounts and expects even more in 2011.

Let's get straight to the point: If you think your 17-year-old daughter is taking plastic sandwich bags out of kitchen cabinet to hide a cocaine habit, you're wrong.

MIAMI -- There is of course no event going on in America from January 14 through 16 than the 29th annual National Investment Company Service Association Conference & Expo.

It used to be that a mutual fund was a pretty easy product to launch. Line up a set up securities. Buy. Hold. Mix occasionally. Now, managing products such as target-date funds present serious operational challenges, the CEO of J.P. Morgan Asset Management Americas said

American Beacon Advisors has launched the American Beacon SiM High Yield Opportunities Fund, sub-advised by Strategic Income Management (SiM).

The “Who Knew” campaign showcases the firm’s four- and five-star-rated funds.

The date was October 13, 2008. One month after Lehman Brothers was left to twist quickly in the wind and die.

Exchange-traded funds are continuing to gain traction among Charles Schwab’s clients.ETF assets held by the firm’s clients climbed 34% in 2010, compared with 28% growth in the ETF industry overall, according to Schwab. The brokerage’s clients hold more than $111 billion in ETF assets.

Letting the net value of assets in a money market fund would "change the shape and form" of such funds -- and could create system risk, according to Maria F. Dwyer, the chief regulatory officer of MFS Investment Management.

After the flat decade that stock-based mutual funds have had and with post-World War II baby boomers starting to retire, "it's all about income now," said Matt Witkos, president of Eaton Vance Distributors, at the opening of the National Investment Company Service Association 29th Annual Conference & Expo.

U.S. equity funds brought in $21 billion, the strongest month for sales in seven years.

The 29th Annual National Investment Company Service Association Conference & Expo opens Monday, with NICSA president Theresa Hammacher launching two assessments of the state of the fund industry.