Mutual Fund Weekly News Roundup for October 10

For mutual fund investors, staying up to date on big industry news can be very important. Below are some of the biggest news pieces for the week ended October 10.

Gateway Investment Advisers announced that it has launched its third mutual fund Gateway Equity Call Premium Fund. The funds tracks the S&P 500 and sells options to generate cash flow and defend against a stock market dip.

This fund is similar to the firm’s Gateway Fund; however, it does differ from the Gateway Fund since the newly launched fund does not limit gains by protecting against losses through put options.

The firm’s parent company Natixis Global Asset Management has invested $10 million to launch the fund. Gateway’s CEO Paul Stewart noted “I would like to think it can get to $1 billion within the next two or three years, but that’s really hard to predict.”

On Monday, Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management launched its actively managed Deutsche Emerging Markets Frontier Fund. The fund is focused on emerging and frontier markets and will also seek exposure to economic growth and attractive risk-return potential positions.

The fund will be managed by Sean Taylor, the Head of Emerging Market Equities at Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management, and tracks the MSCI Frontier Emerging Markets Index. It will also track specific countries in the MSCI Emerging Markets index.

On Thursday, reports were released that American Funds is expected to have its first year without big investor withdrawals since 2008. This would mark an important milestone for the firm, as it has been losing to Vanguard. According to reports, the firm is expected to break even this year.

The firm has benefited from performance from certain mutual funds, including the Capital Income Builder fund, which performed better than 74% of its peers.

The improvements have resulted in American Funds pushing actively managed funds to its clients.

Legg Mason reported preliminary assets under management (AUM) on Friday. AUM for September totalled $707.8 million, up from $656 billion in September 2013.

The latest data included equity inflows of $1.8 billion, fixed income inflows of $0.8 billion and liquidity inflows of $8.8 billion. The results included a negative foreign exchange impact of $5.1 billion.