Mutual funds

It always comes back to performance.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has taken action to authorize the industry's first fixed-income exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Until now, ETFs have been based only on equity indexes. Pending completion of the registration process, the new ETFs are expected to be launched in late July.

AIM Management may not yearn to be the next Donald Trump. But the Houston fund group is taking the plunge into the small but expanding world of closed-end real estate funds.

When UBS Global Asset Management of New York agreed to license Chicago-based Morningstar's new family of style-based stock indexes as the basis for new U.S. and European exchange-traded funds, the investment manager bought more than a new type of index. They bought the Morningstar name.

Two top executives with Kinetics Asset Management have left the White Plains, N.Y., fund group best known for its once high-flying Internet fund. Kinetics' former chief executive officer and chief operating officer have spun off a new alternative investment advisory firm and registered the first of several novel open-end mutual funds that will employ various alternative investment strategies.

Are mutual fund firms that develop managed account products competing with themselves? Yes and no, according to industry executives.

Touchstone Securities announced last week that Patrick Bannigan has joined the firm as senior vice president and officer in charge of Touchstone Investments. In that role, he will be responsible for the sales and profitability of the Touchstone Funds, including the firm's variable annuities.

Rydex Funds has launched a sector rotation fund into the teeth of a market still skeptical about sector funds after the carnage of the past two years.

Mutual fund and alternative investment advisors alike have been racing to attract wealthy clients with a rash of new hedge funds over the past year.

Morningstar's plan to rate managed accounts much the way it ranks mutual funds has drawn concern from an industry lobby group.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, American Funds has a lot to be proud of. An innovative 529 plan it launched with the State of Virginia last Friday has caused at least two other investment managers to revamp their own college savings plans, according to industry executives.

As Franklin Templeton's director of defined contribution services, Dan Reinhold never thought he would find himself working at, of all things, an automobile industry conference.

Open to the back pages of the "Money and Investing" section of the Wall Street Journal and you'll find a series of indexes, including those from the paper's parent company, Dow Jones. Then flip to fund listings provided by Lipper and you'll find a list of funds delineated by category: small-cap, large-cap, value, core, growth.

It's separately managed account mania. In the past month alone, three different studies examining managed acount products and prognosticating their impact on the fund world were issued by industry consultants.

Hedge funds may turn out to be a greater competitor to mutual funds than most people expected. While hedge funds are extremely risky vehicles that do not appeal to investors who are interested in safer products, funds of hedge funds offer some of the advantages of hedge funds with an enormous reduction of risk. Although the number of funds of funds is relatively small right now, it's growing, and may soon capture a lot of assets that ordinarily would have gone to mutual funds, say industry observers.

This year Nuveen Investments launched 18 new closed-end, fixed-income funds. Last year it launched zero.

With U.S. warplanes swarming over Afghanistan and Special Forces troops readying to take to its ground, financial planners have begun to get calls from investors inquiring about defense-related investing.

Fidelity Investments Institutional Brokerage Group and Frank Russell announced an alliance in which Fidelity will distribute Russell's new multi-manager separately managed account program through its registered investment advisors and correspondent broker/dealers.

In an effort to gain access to the education savings market, investment management companies are increasingly looking to partner with existing state-sponsored "529" college savings plans (See MFMN, 9/3/01). But standards don't yet exist for 529 partnerships, so the nature of the arrangements among these companies is different with each one.

For years, people have gathered in quiet, suburban living rooms to pick stocks and discuss matters impacting markets. They are known as investment clubs, and the communities of investors sometimes manage sound returns based on the notion that many heads are better than one.