Mutual funds

Hedge Fund Managers Have Rough Month

NEW YORK - Equity mutual funds were hit with "drastic declines" across-the-board in just about every sector and style in the first quarter of 2008.

Consumer confidence in the economy, including stocks, bonds, mortgages, credit cards and structured products, is dropping, but experts say consumers need to stay invested in a fully diversified portfolio of mutual funds for their own good and for the good of the economy.

While criticisms abound as to who, or which regulatory entity, or set of laws and oversight, is to blame for the credit crisis, the Securities and Exchange Commission is quietly flexing new muscle of its own on the mutual fund trading scandal front.

NEW YORK - The Transamerica Small/Mid Cap Value Fund was recognized as the best small-cap core fund at the annual Lipper Fund Awards dinner here last Wednesday.

NEW YORK – The financial sector took a beating in the first quarter, but financial “bottom feeders” will speed its recovery, possibly ahead of the rest of the market, experts said here at a gathering of researchers and data providers on Thursday night.

Barclays has launched the Premier Fixed Income Fund in Singapore, aiming to provide retail investors with the potential for returns of 7% per annum.

Net inflows into Japanese mutual funds dropped by about 26% in 2007, according to the Nikkei Report.

The Transamerica Small/Mid Cap Value Fund was recognized as the best small-cap core fund at the annual Lipper Fund Awards dinner Wednesday in New York City.

The global credit crisis remains a significant threat to economic growth, despite recent improvement, according to the International Monetary Fund.

RiverSource Investments of Minneapolis, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ameriprise Financial, is shining a brighter light on its international subadvisory affiliate, Threadneedle International Limited, headquartered in London.

WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke strongly defended the central bank's rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. to skeptical lawmakers Wednesday and refused to rule out similar actions in the future.

As we look forward to next month's historic meeting of industry executives at the Investment Company Institute's "Our Foundation-Our Future" 50th Annual General Membership Meeting in Washington, D.C., we have some news of our own.

Wynne Takes Helm of PFPC Investment Services

While the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 391.47 points last Tuesday and many investment banking stocks rocketed in the mid-double digits on the good news of infusion of billions of capital from the faithful shareholders of UBS and other banks, the 407,000 applications for unemployment benefits in the final week of March (anything above 400,000 is official recession territory and the consensus figure had been 365,000), sent the market erractically gyrating at deadline.

NEW YORK - The Advertising Research Foundation awarded both its top-place Grand Ogilvy Award and the Gold Award for Financial Services to Ameriprise Financial at an awards ceremony here last Tuesday for its multimedia national "Dreams Don't Retire" campaign.

ICI Commends Treasury Blueprint

The market-roiling chicanery at Enron, which The Motley Fool astutely characterizes as "shredding profits" through "mark-to-market" accounting at a "batty" company - is just the beginning tale, writes Seth Jayson.

NEW YORK - Things look pretty dismal when a company is burning cash and can't replace revenue, in a week when even the chairman of the Federal Reserve goes against administration policy to acknowledge a broad and deepening recession in the U.S. However, if the situation is addressed early enough, problems can be fixed before they get out of control.

Assets of total money market mutual funds fell by $7.19 billion to $3.498 trillion for the week ending April 2, according to the Investment Company Institute.