Mutual funds

Noting the urgency and immensity of their task, global financial leaders are frantically making small and large changes to U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and international financial accounting standards (IFRS) to make them more similar, and the Securities and Exchange Commission has recently made a single set of standards a high priority.

Since the stock market decline a year ago, there has been much talk of permanent decrease in investors' risk tolerance. Many investors' losses were staggering, goes the refrain, so their tolerance for risk will, for the foreseeable future if not a generation, be substantially lower.

Fidelity Investments has augmented its international trading platform, enabling retail investors, advisers and brokers to trade foreign stocks and currencies in real time. The platform gives retail investors access to 12 foreign markets and eight currencies, along with third-party research, news, real-time market data and quotes, and telephone access to international trading specialists 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Following up on President Obama's mandate for change, regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission recently crafted a report that details their plans to harmonize the regulation of futures and securities.

Federated Investors reported third quarter earnings of $57 million, or 56 cents a share, down 1% from $56.2 million, or 52 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue declined 4% to $293.6 million, as the firm absorbed fees on some of its mutual fund to maintain $1 net asset values.

Janus reported third quarter earnings of $8.2 million, or five cents a share, a 68% decline from the $25.4 million, or 16 cents a share, it earned in the year ago. Revenue declined 17% to $227.6 million.

Legg Mason earned $45.8 million, or 30 cents a share, for the second fiscal quarter of 2010, compared to a loss of $108.7 million, or 77 cents a share, a year earlier. The firm’s assets under management rose 7% from the previous quarter to $702.7 billion but were down 17% from a year earlier.

Barclays Wealth jumped into the active exchange-traded fund pool this month, launching a family of eight actively managed ETFs geared toward high-net-worth investors.

T. Rowe Price reported its third quarter earnings fell 13% to $132.4 million, or 50 cents a share, down from $152.4 million, or 56 cents a share, in the third quarter of last year. Its revenue of $498.1 million narrowly beat analyst consensus of $496 million.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is planning to move ahead and pass new money fund rules by the end of the year and has not ruled out a floating net asset value, Sarah ten Siethoff, senior counsel in the SEC’s division of investment management, told the 15th annual Money Fund Forum.

Investors continued to plow money into long-term mutual funds, investing $6.8 billion in the week ended Oct. 14, the Investment Company Institute said.

Fidelity Investments has augmented its international trading platform, enabling retail investors, advisers and brokers to trade foreign stocks and currencies in real time. The web-based platform gives retail investors access to 12 foreign markets and eight currencies, along with third-party research, news, real-time market data and quotes and telephone access to international trading specialists 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Although health savings accounts currently have $10 billion in assets and are used by eight million people, those assets are expected to rise to $71 billion within fives years, Forbes reports.

The Federal Reserve is still considering selling reserve repos to money market funds to reverse course and pull back some of the $2 trillion in stimulus money it pumped into the money supply, and has begun testing various methods. However, it has not yet decided when to begin taking these measures, as well as to increase interest rates.

RR Donnelley has launched RightContent, an online shared content service for compliance documents for mutual fund, variable annuity and retirement product companies. It allows users to store and manage information in a central repository so that compliance documents can be easily access, editor and rendered.

Although the percentage of people who stopped making contributions to their 401(k) in the first half of 2009 edged up higher from levels throughout 2008, the figure was still a negligible 4.6%, the Investment Company Institute said. In 2008, 3.7% gave up on 401(k) contributions.

Prudential Financial on Oct. 18 launched its “Morse Code SOS” advertising campaign touting the 401(k) administration and healthcare insurance services it offers U.S. companies.

Although American investors have grown much more aware of the risks of investing in stocks and have lower expectations for average annual returns, they do still plan to keep them as an integral part of their retirement portfolios, according to a Vanguard survey conducted in late May.

Russell Investments has introduced Russell Enhanced Asset Allocation, which using forecasting models to identify unsustainable movements in the market and map out a plan to maximize returns while limiting risk and maintaining adequate liquidity. The strategy covers 11 geographic regions and 11 asset classes and produces 114 asset class pair combinations.

Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded the long-term senior debt of FMR, the parent company of Fidelity, from A2 to A1, citing profit margins not meeting expectations.