Mutual funds

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has told 50 leading bond mutual fund companies to remove credit ratings on their holdings from advertisements, marketing materials and websites.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed significant revisions to Regulation AB and other rules regarding the offering process, disclosure and reporting for ABS. The 5-0 vote Friday morning counts the SEC as an added player in the huge push coming from various regulators for more “skin-in-the-game” by ABS issuers.

Assets held in U.S. exchange-traded funds rose 7.2% in March from the previous month to $806 billion, according to monthly data from State Street Global Advisors released last week. ETFs outpaced the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, which rose 6%.

After target-date funds took massive losses in 2008-most notably, those with a near-term retirement date that were supposed to protect investors' money-many on Wall Street expected target-date investors to move their savings elsewhere.

Funds Bear Responsibility for Exec Pay: Critics

Dreyfus has launched the Dreyfus Dynamic Alternatives Fund, a mutual fund designed to provide exposure to a range of hedge fund returns.

Eaton Vance Management has launched the Eaton Vance Commodity Strategy Fund, which will take long and short positions in fixed income instruments, including derivatives, with the Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index Total Return Index as its benchmark.

Charles Schwab is encouraging people receiving tax refunds to resist the temptation to use the money for impulse purchases, but, rather, to use the money for long-term financial goals, especially retirement, and paying down high-interest debt.

Citigroup's mutual fund transfer agent services have again been honored with a 5-star performance rating by National Quality Review for the year ending December 2009.

Dreyfus has launched the Dreyfus Dynamic Alternatives Fund, a mutual fund designed to provide exposure to a range of hedge fund returns.

ProShares has launched the first exchange-traded funds that offer leveraged and inverse exposure to the biotechnology sector.

This isn’t the fee you charge clients. The current fee issue that made its way to the Supreme Court this week deals with the expenses charged by mutual funds.

Investment management firms, custodians and broker/dealers all say that financial planners are embracing Web-based workstations that work on smart phones, but they don’t agree on how fast advisers are going down that path.

Ever since the recession began, everyone from media outlets to industry gurus have deemed 401(k)s a failure.

With the tax deadline fast approaching, wealth management clients are deciding whether they are going to convert from a traditional Individual Retirement Account to a Roth IRA.

In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, Charles R. Schwab, chairman of Charles Schwab Corp., spelled out the grave danger that the near-zero fed funds rate poses for senior citizens.

SEC May Put Cap on Derivatives Exposure

Asset managers have come a long way since the financial crisis to earn back a significant amount of the revenue and earnings lost since the fourth quarter of 2007.

State Street Global Markets’ Investor Confidence Index of 108.0 is up 5.4 points from February’s revised reading of 102.6.

Fidelity’s institutional service organization’s first big initiative is new tools and service upgrades for National Financial broker/dealers to reduce their administrative tasks and help them focus on clients. Fidelity developed the tools after discovering that brokers spend nearly one-third of their time on admin tasks.