Ex-Putnam AVP looking at fraud charges
From Boston Globe
Robin Kelly, 38, a former assistant vice president at Putnam Investments and a man identified in court papers as only "Mr. X" both both face federal conspiracy and wire fraud charges. The pair allegedly transferred $78,000 from a Putnam "class 20" account holding miscellaneous funds to a Vanguard account that Kelly shared with her mother. "Kelly and Mr. X had agreed to split the money but were caught before they did so," US Attorney Donald Stern said. Putnam says it found the error and alerted the FBI to the incident." The events took place in November after the pair who worked in Putnam's control division allegedly approached a third Putnam employee to participate and were rebuffed. Kelly then allegedly altered an e-mail from a Putnam manager so it would appear as request that Putnam wire the money to Vanguard. Kelly allegedly instructed a lower-level worker to execute the transfer while Mr. X distracted the nonparticipating employee.
Fund flows halved in May
From Wall Street Journal
Inflows to mutual funds dropped 50 percent in May to $16.04 billion from $34.02 billion in April, according to data gathered by the Investment Company Institute. Hard hit were sales of aggressive growth funds which fell to $5.7 billion in May from $10.73 billion in April. Growth funds sales fell to $7.76 billion in May from $14.56 billion in April. Despite falling stock sales, bond outflows dropped only slightly to $5.21 billion during May, compared with $6.70 billion during April.
Cash tops stocks
From Wall Street Journal
Money market funds trumped stock funds for the first half of 2000. Barring a turnaround in the markets today, the average supersafe money-market fund returned 2.7%, according to Money Fund Report while the average stock mutual fund returned 2.03% according to Lipper. U.S. Stock funds returned 3.98% before the past two days, meaning they may squeek past cash for the first half.
Bogle's Tirade
From Smart Money
In case anyone didn't already know it, ex-Vanguard honcho Jack Bogle believes the fund industry could do a lot better. Yesterday he took the podium at Morningstar 2000 and quickly fell into his stump speach. Still on his hit list are steep expense ratios, too-high turnover by fund managers of their stocks, exchange-traded funds, and managers who don't want to ruffle corporate feathers by voting their proxies if they think they might have a chance of running the company's 401(k) plan. If you haven't heard it already, follow the link.
 
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