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...

Eliot Spitzer has gone on the warpath again, this time against insurance companies, leaving their stocks wounded some critically along the trail. When Spitzer guns for an industry, investors typically get out of the way, and it was no different...

During the 1990s, Tom Marsico made investing look easy. As manager of Janus Twenty, Marsico recorded huge gains while limiting his portfolio to two dozen stocks. The fund often held well-known stars such as Lucent Technologies and Pfizer. Plenty...

Richard Branson, founder of Britain's Virgin Atlantic Airways, was once asked the best way to become a millionaire. There's really nothing to it, he joked. Start as a billionaire and then buy an airline. Branson's joke must seem like...