Mutual funds

The fund business looks like it’s back.

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.

Standard & Poor’s has launched a new balanced series of indexes that combine equities and fixed income and that range from conservative to growth.

For a mutual fund with a strong track record, Nicholas Equity Income Fund is not particularly large. And its manager is fine with that.

Last year saw a 22% increase in M&A worldwide, and another 36% increase is expected this year, according to Thomson Reuters.

The funds include a market neutral, medical sciences and large-cap offering.

This is the firm’s first mutual fund.

Nearly two-thirds, 62%, of investors have changed their approach to investing following the recession, TD Ameritrade found in a survey. The most common changes were moving into fixed income, cited by 28%, and into mutual funds and managed accounts, cited by 23%.

Municipal bond mutual fund outflows continued to subside last week from recent record-setting levels as the cash most prone to panic appears to have left by now.

Tax-exempt money market funds fell $2.34 billion to $324.39 billion in net assets in the week ended Jan. 31, according to the iMoneyNet's Money Fund Report.

The fund is linked to the Andean region of Chile, Columbia and Peru.

The indexes are based on a mix of defensive and dynamic stocks.

Russell Investments on Thursday debuted the Russell Stability Indexes, a mix of both defensive and dynamic stocks.

Even with a long-term shift to passive investing, "managed solutions" packaging exchange-traded funds should also grow rapidly, said Scott Burns, Morningstar's ETF expert.

Equity funds net $5.12 billion of inflows, following $4.96 billion of inflows the week before.

The risk-management and trade analytics service announced the launch Tuesday of a service evaluating the illiquidity of municipal bond mutual fund holdings.

The fund will concentrate on opportunities in consumer products and goods throughout the world.

Alpine Woods Capital, advisor to the Alpine Mutual Funds, has launched the Alpine Global Consumer Growth Fund, which will concentrate on opportunities in consumer products and services throughout the world.

Boston Advisors on Monday launched the Broad Allocation Strategy Fund, based on a separately managed account strategy the investment advisor has run for the past two years.

Investors established a new record for withdrawals from municipal bond mutual funds in the week ended Jan. 19 as headline risk continued to chase people from state and local government debt funds.