Mutual funds

TD Ameritrade and Vanguard Group have added the Thesis Flexible Fund, an alternative strategies fund, to their respective platforms. Grand Distribution Services of Milwaukee distributes the fund, managed by Thesis Fund Mgmt. of New York. The fund uses hedging strategies and is managed by the Thesis team with Stephen Roseman, Thesis Fund Mgmt. chief executive officer, as senior portfolio manager.

The number of exchange-traded funds has surged the past few years, bringing a unique business opportunity to Russell Indexes in Tacoma.

It's official: The 60-week-long, $600 billion-strong, steady sales streak for mutual funds is over.

After getting burned by the financial crisis in 2008, many investors have decided to sit on the sidelines instead of jumping back into equities. But Putnam Investments said at its mid-year equity markets briefing Tuesday in New York that it sees the uncertainty in the financial markets as an opportunity.

The reform bill that appears headed to enactment is designed to address problems that produced the 2008 financial crisis. A major premise behind the legislation seems to be that the crisis resulted in large part from regulators’ lack of adequate tools. Thus the bill provides the Securities and Exchange Commission, the primary regulator of mutual funds, and the Federal Reserve Board with even greater authority than they now possess. It also creates entirely new regulatory bodies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

As the buyer base for Build America Bonds continues to expand, Fitch Ratings has created a website so investors unfamiliar with the municipal market can visit a "one-stop shop" for all BAB-related research

Global assets under management rose 16.3% to $49 trillion last year from a year earlier, according to Cerulli Associates.

RS Investments, San Francisco, announced Thursday it has entered into an agreement to acquire the portfolio management team of Oak Value Capital Management, Inc. of Chapel Hill, N.C. RS will also acquire "certain assets of that firm, including its investment management relationships," the company said.

Vanguard Group announced Thursday an aggressive expansion strategy to expand its index fund family.The Valley Forge, Pa., mutual fund giant plans to introduce 19 new funds with exchange-traded fund in an effort to offer a wider array of low-cost stock and bond options. The firm will also launch ETF shares of its flagship Vanguard 500 Index Fund.

The mutual fund giant plans to launch equity funds and ETFs along with municipal bond and international real estate products

Wells Fargo is merging nearly $2.2 billion of Evergreen Investments municipal bond mutual funds into existing Wells funds as part of the bank’s purchase of Wachovia.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. announced Tuesday it launched a unit designed to clear futures and derivatives trades.

Financial advisers are starting to turn their backs on the idea of going independent and are instead favoring the benefits of working at wire houses, a survey found.

Putnam Investments plans to continue to aggressively expand its array of products even as market volatility has forced some competitors to retrench.

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted 5:0 Wednesday to require target-date funds to do a better job of explaining the purpose of their retirement date, how their asset-allocation glidepaths change over time, and, in a new twist, to include easy-to-understand visuals in ads.

The ICI is asking both high-frequency traders and dark pools for more information—and turning to the SEC for help.

Investor-adviser relations are considerably improving, Fidelity Investments and National Financial found in a survey of 350 investors and 218 brokers and advisers.

Mutual fund investors preferred bonds, while gold set the standard for ETF inflows.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association Monday said the creation of a system of monitoring overall risks to the nation's financial industry could take one of eight forms, each of which would be costly.

WSJ's June 15 "Fund Track" column picks up on the continuing price wars among ETF providers, Fidelity, Vanguard, iShares, Van Eck and Schwab, notwithstanding.