Have you ever considered looking beyond the financial markets to find a finance job? No? Well, you may want to think about this. While the financial sector is shrinking in the wake of the economic meltdown, continuing shocks to the financial system from the European sovereign crises, and a complete inability of Washington politicians to agree on anything, cash is piling up on Main Street. Treasury Strategies, a Washington-based treasury... Read more

It is not what you do, it is where you do it, at least when it comes to fixed income. That is one of the many findings by a joint study on asset management compensation conducted by Greenwich Associates and Johnson Associates. The researchers discovered that institutional fixed-income professionals make more working for hedge funds than traditional institutional asset management organizations. Last year the average annual compensation for hedge fund fixed-income... Read more

News that Legg Mason’s legendary value investor Bill Miller is retiring at the end of April after guiding the Legg Mason Value Trust mutual fund for 30 years may seem like one more sign that actively managed mutual funds have had their moment on the stage. After all, not a single one made the top quintile of performance for third quarter. Is it time to pass the baton to exchange... Read more

If you're looking for a job, think about retirement. BlackRock Inc. expects U.S. defined contribution market to exceed $6 trillion by 2014. Although job listings have pulled back this year, there are still plenty of postings in the industry that is poised to take center stage as a primary retirement resource. Defined contribution plans are going global. Allianz has found that “the shift towards defined contribution (DC) schemes has not... Read more

It looks like U.S. Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) and exchange-traded notes (ETNs) will grab the top 50 slots in Thomson Reuter’s Lipper quarterly performance report for mutual funds. Final results, of course, won’t be in for a couple of weeks but it's a testimony to speed with which the ETF industry is growing in size and popularity because of their superior performance. Morningstar estimates that ETFs now generate 35% to 40%... Read more

Given all the bad news about the increasing vacancies, decreasing rents and declining property values, it may surprise some that the real estate investment trust, or REIT, sector is hiring. REIT yields can be as much as 6% while the 10-year-treasury has fallen below 2%. Plus, the compound annual return of real estate climbed 10% between 1996 and 2010. So they're seen as a way to satisfy the appetite for... Read more