Retirement planning

The Hartford suffered a serious 83% drop in net income due, the firm announced yesterday, to poor investments.

The Charles Schwab Foundation will sponsor awards for the National Financial Literacy Challenge, a 35-question test of personal finance for high school students in the U.S.

Many investors are gasping at the first-quarter losses on their financial statements and wondering whether they should change their asset allocation to a more conservative plan.

What inspired me to find a tremendous investing opportunity in the Internal Revenue Service's tax code?

The U.S. House of Representatives has gone on federal public record as warning the industry and government legislators that raising long-term capital gains on mutual fund investors any higher than it already is will seriously impair the markets, shareholders, and, eventually, retirees.

Senate Democrats in Connecticut are pushing for a state-sponsored 401(k) retirement plan for small businesses, designed for employers who can’t afford to offer a retirement plan to their workers.

A number of news events in the past week alone indicate without question the U.S. economy is at a dangerous inflection point, but so far, no one-no economist, analyst, fund manager, regulator, legistator, president or CEO-is willing to put together the pieces to talk about something other than snapshot first-quarter, year-over-year or historical trendline data that make a case for the return of the markets.

Russell Investments has launched “LifePoints Funds, Target Distribution Strategies,” a series of multi-manager funds designed specifically for the “decumulation” phase.

Gen Xers are stressed out about the prospect of retirement, with only 31% of them believing they will be able to retire from the workforce.

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 the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 391.47 points on Tuesday and many investment banks' stocks rocketed in the mid-double digits on the good news of infusion of capital from shareholders, Lipper preliminary data on mutual fund results for the first quarter of the year was disappointing, The Wall Street Journal reports this morning.

Reaction to the Subprime Crisis in the first quarter of 2008.

Market Outlook

Russell Investments has launched six new “strategy” funds in its LifePoints Funds, Target Date Series, including an “in retirement” portfolio

BOSTON-Asset managers will have to adapt their techniques and operations beyond their current business models to survive the shifting demands in the retirement product marketplace.

Nationwide Financial, a Columbus, Ohio, investment manager, opened a website Monday to give mutual funds and other partner firms the resources to help sales agents, principally financial advisers, develop retirement plan business.

Charles Schwab has announced a new suite of funds designed to generate a targeted annual payout for retirees.

ING is providing 403(b) plan documents that public schools can use in order to meet new IRS requirements by next January.

Van Kampen Retirement Strategy Trust has filed for 10 new target retirement date funds with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

MIAMI-U.S. companies are retiring the idea of the traditional, defined benefit pension plan in favor of do-it-yourself IRAs and 401(k) plans.