The Markets

In 2011, 18% of Vanguard retirement plan participants held extreme asset allocations—10% with only equities and 8% with no equities.

Open-end mutual funds had their strongest long-term flows in nearly two years with an estimated $44 billion in February inflows.

U.S. exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw $15 billion in net inflows in February 2012.

Investors put an estimated $46 billion in net inflows into stock and bond mutual funds in the U.S. in February 2012.

Exchange-traded fund (ETF) assets increased by more than $44 billion in the month of February, up 3.9%.

Inflation is a major concern for plan sponsors and their participants when planning retirement investment portfolios. 

The latest S&P Target Date Scorecard indicates that further-dated target-date funds are continuing to generally have lower cross-sectional ranges of equity exposure than closer-dated funds, through not by...

The current economic climate has affected the way in which nearly half (49%) of Americans are approaching contributions to their individual retirement accounts (IRA).

The percentage of U.S. workers who make annual individual retirement account (IRA) contributions has dropped to a record low of 15%, according to a recent survey commissioned by...

The lifecycle investment product market increased to $842 billion as of year-end 2011, reports Strategic Insight (SI), an Asset International company. 

In February, corporate pension plans experienced a $20 billion improvement in funding, according to Milliman's Pension Funding Index.  

The aggregate deficit in pension plans sponsored by S&P 1500 companies was $410 billion on February 29, 2012.

The typical U.S. corporate pension plan’s funded status rose 2.1% in February. 

It is a good time for retirement plan sponsors to take stock of the long-term benefits of retirement programs, and get that message out to participants.

Plan sponsors of the largest U.S. defined benefit (DB) pension plans are deepening their risk-management focus on plan liabilities.  

Liabilities still outpaced the growth in assets for the 16 publicly listed U.S. corporations with pension liabilities of more than $20 billion, according to an analysis conducted by...

State Street Corp. said on Monday the U.S. attorney in Manhattan and the New York attorney general are investigating its foreign-exchange trades.

In contrast to the majority of months in 2011, the net direction of 401(k) participants’ transfers in January 2012 returned to equities.

Total 529 college savings plan assets were an estimated $144.4 billion in Q4 2011, according to data from Financial Research Corporation (FRC), a division of Strategic Insight.

Net cash contributions to long-term mutual funds around the world came in at around $200 billion for 2011, down from almost $1 trillion in both 2010 and 2009,...