Mutual funds

While Fidelity Investments agrees with most of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed changes to money market funds, it doesn’t want to see “radical changes” to the asset class, a spokesman told The Wall Street Journal.

Assets under management are down for nearly all firms due to market depreciation. And making matters worse, most funds have also been hit with steep outflows. According to Strategic Insight, only about 22% of equity mutual funds had inflows for at least four of the last five months of 2008. But a few firms have actually seen positive flows over the past year.

DST Systems Inc. this year celebrates 40 years of providing market-leading solutions to the mutual fund industry. In recognition of this milestone, Money Management Executive asked DST's senior leadership to identify ways in which investment management companies can maximize the value they deliver to their stakeholders by leveraging the strengths and resources of their service provider.

Crandall to Become CEO Of Massachusetts Mutual

More Regulation to Result in Higher Costs

Regulatory leaders are questioning whether changes need to be made to target-date funds after several 2010 funds reported huge losses last year, but mutual fund industry leaders say these concerns are overblown.

Banking companies will be hard-pressed to repeat a banner 2008 in terms of sales of fixed annuities. Fixed annuities were popular late last year and early this year, but with interest rates falling and the markets in a fingers-crossed recovery, executives and analysts expect demand for these products to start tapering off.

Regulators are searching for ways to make money market funds stronger without inadvertently crippling the $3.7 trillion industry, but reaching that delicate balance will require compromises from both sides.

Financial advisers were able to save their millionaire clients big money last year, helping to fortify the need and demand for good advice among the wealthy, Fidelity Investments found.

John Hancock Funds has developed a tool that allows financial advisers to create detailed analyses of their clients’ portfolios and prepare high-quality, customized reports.

The economy will not bound back with élan but at least will provide a “normal recovery,” Vanguard founder John Bogle tells Bloomberg.

Sales of long-term mutual funds, i.e. equity and bond funds, rose by $11.14 billion in the week ended June 17, and for the week ended June 24, money market funds reaped $34.22 billion, the Investment Company Institute announced Thursday.

After years of the court system siding with the mutual fund industry on the discrepancy between retail and institutional mutual fund fees, the case that the Supreme Court will hear this fall, Jerry N. Jones et al. v. Harris Associates, might be a watershed one for investors.

ProFunds Group Thursday launched the first exchange-traded funds to offer three times the leverage of their benchmark index. The ProShares UltraPro S&P 500 seeks 300% of the performance of the S&P 500 in a single day, and the ProShares UltraPro Short S&P 500 seeks 300% of the inverse performance of the S&P 500.“The S&P 500 has the largest following in the ETF industry, with nearly $90 billion of assets benchmarked to it,” said Michael L. Sapir, chairman and CEO of ProFunds. “As a leader in short and leveraged ETFs, we are committed to giving investors more choices to manage risk and pursue returns.”

The Federal Reserve Thursday extended a number of emergency funding facilities from the end of October until Feb. 1, including an asset-backed facility for money funds, the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility.Other extended programs are the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility and the Term Securities Lending Facility. Along with this, the Fed is extending swap lines with other central banks through Feb. 1, citing the continued strain on many capital markets. "Conditions in financial markets have improved in recent months, but market functioning in many areas remains impaired and seems likely to be strained for some time," the Fed said in a statement.

Citing proficiency in conducting client meetings and responsiveness, respectively, BlackRock and Mainstay wholesalers are the highest rated in the industry, according to a report from kasina and Horsesmouth.The firms with the highest Wholesaler Satisfaction Scores in the survey are:

The number of millionaires in the world plunged 14.9% last year as the markets faced extreme losses and volatility, according to the Merrill Lynch/Capgemini 2009 World Wealth Report. This means there are fewer millionaires in the world today than in 2005. The number of ultra-high-net-worth individuals (those worth net assets of at least $30 million, not including their primary residence) also dropped 24.6%.

In today’s unpredictable market, even the “safest” investments such as stable-value funds carry considerable risks that plan sponsors and participants might not be aware of, cautions Watson Wyatt. Thus, the consultant urges plan sponsors and investors to review their holdings.

The Securities and Exchange Commission met Wednesday to discuss various changes to money market funds to safeguard them from another “run on the bank” like what happened last September with the Primary Fund.

As the asset management industry will inevitably face more regulations, costs will increase and competition will intensify, giving the largest companies an advantage that will increase their market share. Those were some of the views of 225 asset managers from 30 countries that Create Research surveyed. The study was commissioned by Citi’s global transaction services group and Principal Global Investors.