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Why Investors Are Pouring Into Alternative Investments
Tweet Share on Facebook May 27, 2010 CommentA recent report shows that investors are clamoring for more options for their portfolios. In 2009, investors poured approximately $75 billion into alternative-style mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in the U.S., according to a report released by asset manager SEI and research firm Strategic Insight. The largest inflows were seen in long/short, market-neutral, commodity, and currency funds.
"Alternative strategies have the prospect of offering non-correlated returns to diversify some of the risks that investors see in their portfolio of traditional long-only products," says Ben Alpert, hedge fund analyst with Morningstar. "That's why you see the trend of why they're going in that direction."
[See U.S. News's list of the 100 Best Mutual Funds for the Long Term, and use our Mutual Fund Score to find the best investments for you.]
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Will Investors Keep Shunning the Market?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 19, 2010 CommentThe flash crash has claimed another victim: mutual funds’ pristine inflow streak. During the week that started May 6, the same day as the market’s 1,000-point intraday plunge, investors yanked a net total of $14 billion out of long-term mutual funds, the Investment Company Institute reported on Wednesday. The last time that mutual funds had net weekly outflows was in March 2009.
[See U.S. News's list of the 100 Best Mutual Funds for the Long Term, and use our Mutual Fund Score to find the best investments for you.]
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How to Avoid Portfolio Overlap
Tweet Share on Facebook May 19, 2010 CommentFor many investors, diversification is a brute-force activity: By the sheer size of their portfolios, they look to insulate themselves from risk. In many cases, though, they’re inadvertently magnifying their potential for losses. That’s because without proper care, a seemingly diversified portfolio can become quite entangled.
[See U.S. News's list of the 100 Best Mutual Funds for the Long Term, and use our Mutual Fund Score to find the best investments for you.]
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3 Winners From the Flash Crash
Tweet Share on Facebook May 18, 2010 CommentDuring this month’s flash crash, which saw the Dow briefly plummet by roughly 1,000 points, most asset classes took sharp hits. And in the ensuing panic, the stock market seemed dangerously close to flying off its hinges. But before writing off the entire event as an unmitigated disaster, consider how the market’s tailspin affected these three types of investments:
[See U.S. News's list of the Best Mutual Funds for 2010, and use our Mutual Fund Score to find the best investments for you.]
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5 Overpriced Mutual Funds
Tweet Share on Facebook May 14, 2010 CommentHow much is too much? That’s the question at the center of a highly contentious debate over mutual fund fees. And, except in extreme cases (for instance, the recently liquidated Frontier Microcap Fund’s expense ratio at one point reached a mindboggling 18 percent, cementing its reputation as the mascot for absurdly high fees), the answer is far from clear.
[Use the U.S. News Mutual Fund Score and the rankings of trusted fund analysts to find the best mutual funds for you.]
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New Mutual Fund Will Focus on Africa
Tweet Share on Facebook May 5, 2010 Comment (1)As a broadening debt crisis draws the financial community’s attention to the euro zone, money manager Larry Seruma has quietly been looking toward an entirely different corner of the global economy. With little fanfare, Seruma’s firm, Nile Capital Management, has launched the first-ever actively managed, U.S.-based mutual fund to focus exclusively on Africa. The fund will invest in African stock markets and in companies that, while based in other continents, get a significant portion of their revenues from Africa.
