Vanguard sales off 75%
From TheStreet.com
Index funds in the U.S. are not what they used to be. O.K., the Vanguard 500 Index fund now has $106 billion in assets, putting it ahead of Fidelity Magellan fund ($105 billion), but Vanguard is losing market share. The paper points out that the S&P 500 is up just 0.2%, and the Vanguard Group's share of the new money has dropped sharply. ''We've gone from having 30% of the industry's market share to 10 or 12%,'' Vanguard founder John Bogle admits in the article. In 1999, Vanguard raked in estimated $46 billion of net new money, says Boston-based Financial Research. This year FRC says the Valley Forge firms take has dropped to just $6 billion this year.

Fund companies beat funds
From TheStreet.com
John Waggoner’s syndicated column sings the praises of investing in fund companies. That’s right, the average fund company is turning in better performance than its product line. The Lipper Management Company Index is up 50.5 percent this year compared blowing away the modest 4 percent gain for the average stock mutual fund. Waggoner points out that the fund industry is now collecting fees on $7.1 trillion in assets. Among the winners: Amvescap, where sales have grown 51.2 percent the past 12 months vs. 29.3 percent for the fund industry and 17.9 percent for the Standard & Poor's 500 index. Amvescap's net profit margin, for example, is 18.2 percent vs. 7.3 percent for the S&P. He also highlights Stilwell Financial and Marsh & McLennan.

Pictet & Cie targets U.S. advisors
From TheStreet.com
Swiss private-bank Pictet & Cie is set to sell funds to individual U.S. customers through investment advisers. The Geneva-based firm will offer two new funds and make another three that are currently offered only to institutions available to individuals. The funds will have a minimum investment of $50,000.

Why doesn’t Asia index?
From TheStreet.com
Are indexers attracted to performance or low expenses? In science, the hypothesis would be tested by setting up to samples, a test and a control. Unfortunately, we live in a world with just one interlinked market of stocks. Still, the Asian market may provided some sort of control. Interestingly, the paper reports that Asian investors are more likely to invest in managed funds than U.S. investors. Is it a coincidence that for the past three years and the past five years, actively managed stock funds beat the MSCI index. In fact, 80% of all Asian regional funds beat the index post fees.  

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