Bored Boards
From The Wall Street Journal
Chicago-based consulting firm Schlindwein Associates ranked 138 mutual fund boards, in what is believed to be the first rigorous evaluation of fund-board performance. Each board's level of independence was assessed by counting the number of outside directors. Compensation was also taken into account, with lower scores going to boards that got paid large sums for supervising small numbers of funds with less asset bases. Vanguard, Alliance, Templeton, American and Janus, plus a bunch of little known fund groups ranked in the top 20. The top scorer was the board of the $8-billion-in-assets Nicholas Funds.
John Bogle Jr., son of Vanguard Group founder John C. Bogle, is launching the first mutual fund of his new firm, Bogle Investment Management, effective Monday.
Fidelity allows after hours trading
From The Boston Globe
Fidelity Investments said it will let retail investors trade securities outside traditional market hours beginning next month. The firm said it would extend its trading hours for on-line investors to include a 4:30 PM to 8 PM slot under its after-hours trading program, Fidelity will allow clients to place limit orders for Nasdaq stocks and a limited number of NYSE stocks. Investors must buy round lots of at least 100 shares. Fidelity will process after-hours trades through REDIBook, an ECN it co-owns with Schwab; Spear, Leeds & Kellogg; and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. DLJ also announced extended trading hours yesterday.
Funds in the Press
- Janus is loading up on Sun Microsystems but the group's managers are shedding Microsoft And Dell Positions, according to Investor's Business Daily.