Mutual funds

An upstart Washington, D.C., based online financial management firm has found a unique way to market to low and middle income individuals:

Long-term mutual funds took in $12.75 billion in the week ended March 3, marking the 51st straight week for inflows, which now total $500 billion, according to the Investment Company Institute.

After the stock market wiped away so many investors' wealth over the past two years, and amid disagreements among economists whether the recovery is sustainable, investors remain on sidelines—even though stocks are up 69% from their March 9, 2009 lows.

Assets held in domestic exchange-traded funds increased last month, but couldn’t quite keep pace with the Standard & Poor’s 500.

Bucking their overall skepticism or outright distrust of financial services companies, 90% of Americans trust the advice their financial planners have been giving them amid the financial turmoil of the past two years, according to the First Command Financial Behaviors Index.

Do Buyers Prefer Passive or Active?

While financial advisers have been relying on internal wholesalers more heavily since the financial downturn, they are also finding those contacts not as accessible or responsive as they would like, according to the latest installment in Financial Research Corp.’s Advisor Insight Series, “Wholesaler Effectiveness.” FRC concluded that fund companies may be underestimating and spreading this valuable resource too thinly.

Folio Institutional, a division of FOLIOfn, has teamed up with Alliance Benefit Group Carolinas to offer a turn-key, web-based 401(k) platform that offers transparency, simplicity, low cost and is customizable. It includes custody, trading, recordkeeping and administration, and is available to advisers for just 95 basis points.

Financial planners and advisers hope that by boosting marketing they can expand their practices this year, according to a survey released by TD Ameritrade Institutional.

Investors continue to stuff municipal bond mutual funds with cash, supporting bond prices even as by some measures they are nearly as expensive as they have ever been.

Capital Fulfillment Group has debuted ClickOne, a summary prospectus tool in compliance with Securities and Exchange Commission rules. Using patented technologies, it is designed to offer a simple and cost-effective way for mutual fund companies to equip investors with summary prospectuses via print-on-demand. CFG estimates this will reduce asset management firms' printing costs by 80%.

America’s millionaires are bouncing back. The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more, not including their primary residence, grew 16% to 7.8 million in 2009, up from 6.7 million the year before, Spectrem Group’s “Affluent Market Insights 2010” report shows. In 2008, the millionaire population declined 27%.

Driven by the success of exchange-traded fund provider BlackRock, ETFs appear to be gaining notable market share in 401(k) plans, and while their use so far has primarily been among small companies, once the trend catches on among larger employers, ETFs’ popularity in 401(k) plans could become quite notable.

Nearly 70% of defined contribution balances have returned to levels prior to the stock market slump of 2008 and 2009, according to a survey by Mercer, a provider of benefits administration outsourcing.

Being owned by a bank has handcuffed many mutual fund units. Just don't tell that to JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s J.P. Morgan Funds.

$420B in Retirement Plan, Endowment Assets Expected to Change Hands in 2010

Baltimore asset management titan T. Rowe Price reported its executives took compensation cuts in 2009, led by CEO James Kennedy, who had his compensation package slashed by 17%.

Nine percent of executives in the finance, insurance and real estate sector plan to hire full-time staff members in the next quarter, a new survey by Robert Half International found. Overall, 10% are planning on hiring, and only 6% are planning layoffs.

Long-term mutual funds gained another $10.97 billion in sales in the week ended Feb. 24, the Investment Company Institute said. Sales over the past 50 weeks have been consistently positive and near half a trillion, or $487 billion.

Royal Bank of Canada’s wealth management division reported net income of $213 million for the first quarter ended Jan. 31, up 72% from the $91 million from a year earlier, partly due to higher fee-based client assets and some accounting adjustments.