Ticker Talk: News and Notes
* Americans are storing a bigger portion of their retirement money in stocks these days. About 43% of Americans own stock mutual funds in their retirement accounts and 37% hold individual stocks, according to a survey released Monday by American Century Investments, a mutual fund company in Kansas City, Mo. Those percentages are up from 32% and 29%, respectively, in early 1996.
* Kansas City Southern Industries Inc., which gets most of its profit from selling mutual funds, will be getting a boost from rival fund managers when it’s added to the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. Adding Kansas City Southern means money managers who run funds that mimic the S&P; 500 must buy shares of the company to make sure they accurately reflect the index’s performance. Kansas City Southern owns fund manager Janus Capital Corp. and a 10,000-mile railroad network that links the U.S. and Mexico. The Kansas City, Mo.-based company replaces AMP Inc. in the benchmark U.S. index. AMP is being acquired.
* Shareholders of the top-ranking Internet Fund voted Monday to reopen the fund, effective today, and increase the number of shares of common stock to 50 million from 10 million. The fund, which invests primarily in Internet stocks, has been the best-performing U.S. mutual fund this year. It has posted a return of 88.3% so far this year, according to Bloomberg Fund Performance.
* E-Trade Group Inc., the No. 3 online brokerage, agreed to acquire ClearStation Inc., a financial Web site with 90,000 registered members. Palo Alto-based E-Trade said it will pay an undisclosed number of shares for San Francisco-based ClearStation. The transaction is expected to close within 30 days. ClearStation’s site, https://www.clearstation.com, was opened in July.
