The recent bear market was one of the worst in history, but investors in the Calamos Market Neutral Fund, a mutual fund, hardly noticed. With annual total returns averaging a solid, if unspectacular, 8.4 percent from 2000 through 2002, the bear...

Investors have been flocking to foreign stocks, and for good reason. But there is also good reason to remain wary of overseas investments. During the first 10 months of 2004, international funds had inflows of $83 billion, a record pace and more...

Efforts to make corporate bonds more appealing to retail investors have reached a crossroads, and their ultimate success or failure now depends in large part on whether financial advisors acquire an appetite for them. The advisors, of course, must...

Sometime or other, 40 percent of Americans will hear the words It's malignant. The good news, for both patients and investors, is that pharmaceutical companies are pioneering new, more effective cancer treatments all the time. The deadliest form...

The SEC's requirement that mutual fund boards be stocked with more independent executives met with jeers when it was passed last year. Now, the raspberry blowers have some research to back up their disdain. Missouri University's School of...

Assets in separately managed accounts are growing steadily again after hitting a rough patch between 2001 and 2003, but many investors still don't understand what it is they do. Interviews with more than two dozen investors who own SMAs found that...

Want to invest in China? Consider Australian mining companies. Commercially speaking, China and Australia are growing closer by the minute. China's ambassador to Australia, Fu Ying, recently told a Sydney audience that the gears of the two...

The mutual fund scandals have put advisors in a tough position: Recommending a fund that ends up in the headlines can deal a serious blow to an advisor's reputation and can even mean lost clients. One way to be safe is to stick with companies that...

If there’s one thing to be learned from “all weather” investment strategies such as muni laddering, it’s this: there is such a thing as too conservative.

The overhaul of the mutual fund industry spearheaded by Eliot Spitzer is widely viewed as a victory for investors, but some analysts are challenging that notion. In September 2003, Spitzer set off a firestorm, charging mutual fund companies with...