Mutual funds

U.S. and foreign equity mutual funds hit 10-year records in the second quarter, with domestic equity funds rising 17.05% and international equity funds rising 26.66%, according to Lipper. For both, it’s the best performance since the fourth quarter of 1999, when U.S. equity funds surged 19.47% and world equity funds delivered 27.42%.

Fidelity Canada is standardizing its mutual fund administration fees, so that its fees will be more even, predictable and transparent. The fixed administration fee will be 24 basis points for balanced funds, 29 basis points for North American equity funds, 33 basis points for global equity funds and 11 basis points for fixed income funds.

One of President Obama’s proposed financial reforms would require employers that do not offer a 401(k) to automatically enroll their employees into an IRA. If implemented, it would give the biggest boost to the retirement savings industry since the creation of the 401(k) in 1980, enrolling 40 million new investors, and attract more than $100 billion within five years, The Wall Street Journal reports.

U.S. financial institutions have a lot of work to do to win back the trust of the American investor, with about half saying they don’t trust banks to put customers’ best interests ahead of corporate goals, a survey by Harris Interactive for Cake Financial found.

In response to investors’ interest in taking a comprehensive approach to their finances, financial advisers are moving even more broadly away from commissions to fees, and this is boosting their earnings by roughly 10%, the College for Financial Planning Annual Survey found in a survey of 390 advisers. Cerulli Associates assisted in the polling.

Despite the repercussions from the blowup of the Reserve Fund’s Primary Fund, money market funds still have not properly addressed liquidity and credit quality issues, the ratings agencies believe, and as a result they might strengthen their standards, The Wall Street Journal reports.

In a roundtable with The Wall Street Journal four of the most preeminent asset managers discussed their outlook for the economy, and while they expect rough times to continue for some time to come, they do see pockets of opportunity.

Propelled by yields that have been at 18-year highs for the past nine months, high-yield bond funds rose 23% in the first half of the year.

Just as the financial crisis is unprecedented, the recovery is also expected to chart new grounds, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

Morningstar has added 10 new categories for its mutual fund classification system, six of them for commodities and four for sectors.The new commodity categories are: agriculture, broad basket, energy, industrial materials, precious metals and miscellaneous. The new sector categories are: consumer discretionary, consumer staples, equity energy and industrials.In addition, Morningstar has added commodities as a broad asset subclass to its six asset classes: U.S. stock, international stock, taxable bond, municipal bond, balanced and alternatives. Funds that correspond to this subclass will be benchmarked against the Morningstar Long-Only Commodity Index.“The growing number of commodity funds and their increased usage prompted us to add these new categories and the broad asset class, so investors can more properly evaluate and compare funds that invest in commodities,” said John Rekenthaler, vice president of research at Morningstar.

Diminishing employment opportunities notwithstanding, 9.5 million retired Americans are considering returning to work at least part-time, according to a study by Charles Schwab. Also, 32% of currently employed Americans expect to hold onto their jobs and delay retirement.

The economy will emerge from the recession in the second half of the year, but growth will be a tepid 2% in 2010, a survey of 23 leading economists by BNA found. By comparison, the U.S. economy grew an average of 3.1% a year between 1995 and 2004.

The majority of financial services firms don’t expect an economic recovery to take place until 2010 or later, with 34% saying they expect a rebound sometime in the first six months of next year and 32% pointing to a future date, a survey of 125 companies by Ernst & Young found.

Returns on target-date funds continue to disappoint, with the five largest 2010 funds trailing the S&P 500 by 11 percentage points since the market’s March 9 low. They are up an average of 25% since that date, well below the benchmark index’s 36% rise, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Munder Names FitzGerald As Firm's First President

Match or No Match, 401(k) Contributions Are Critical

As the economic slump curbs retirement savings and the government considers imposing curbs on target-date funds, Great-West Retirement Services is trying out what its president is calling "the next generation" of target-date funds.

It won't be easy in the aftermath of a global recession, but with the right mixture of transparency and expertise, wealth managers will be able to regain their status as trusted advisers.

In the wake of Bernie Madoff's monumental, $60 billion Ponzi scheme, regulators are proposing to increase accounting safeguards by requiring mandatory surprise audit inspections of every investment adviser with custody of client assets.

Bill Miller, manager of the Legg Mason Opportunity Trust Fund, is showing that he’s still got game. With the fund returning a stunning 48% in the second quarter, it is the No. 1 performing U.S. stock fund for the period.