Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

The House Ways and Means Committee was set to consider legislation on June 18 introduced the previous day by Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) that would protect middle-class families from the alternative minimum tax (AMT) this year. The bill, the Alternative Minimum Tax Relief Act of 2008 (H.R. 6275), would ensure “that the number of taxpayers subject to the AMT will not increase,” according to a committee release.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

While news of trouble at monoline insurers seems to have slowed since February, the municipal bond sector still faces critical challenges. At risk in particular is the market for so-called auction rate securities (ARS), which municipalities use to issue tax-exempt debt at a lower cost. Many experts agree that the troubled ARS market is more the result of a liquidity crisis—with banks pulling out of the auctions—than a credit issue, despite the fact that monolines have helped depress valuations for some time.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Morningstar, Inc. has launched Morningstar Direct Alternative Investment Edition, a Web-based platform that enables users to conduct rigorous alternative investment research by combining timely data with analytics and reporting tools that cover about 8,700 hedge funds, funds of hedge funds, and Commodity Trading Advisor products.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

At a time when financial market conditions are going from bad to worse, experts believe that those who can afford to put some of their retirement savings into alternative assets will increasingly be looking to do so.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

With traditional markets in the doldrums and Asian economic growth on a tear, commodities are among the hottest investments around. There’s a case to be made that inflation will make positions in hard assets appreciate for the next several years, but I don’t think that the rise in prices will be uniform across all raw materials.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Once upon a time, long ago, technology stocks accounted for over one-third of the S&P 500’s market capitalization. In just a few short years, the bursting of the Internet Bubble halved that amount. Even so, technology is still one of the largest sectors of the market—and also one of the most popular among fund managers.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Advisors and their clients who want to invest in environmentally sustainable assets have two new choices with the launch of Sustainable Asset Management’s (SAM) Sustainable Water Fund and Sustainable Climate Fund.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

One of the most prominent features of the U.S. economy in the last two decades has been a consistent decline in volatility. Recent volatility, however, points to a potential increase of the metric to more historical levels.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Next time you’re thinking about investing in a hedge fund or managed futures account, you may want to check with your grandmother. Explain what you’re about to do, and if she understands what you’re talking about, you may be on to something.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

August was a study in contrasts. Domestic equity and high-grade fixed income weathered the storm of global volatility to close mostly higher, but the loan market fell apart. Finding a bid on high-risk corporate bonds or subprime mortgages was even more difficult.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

“We think that due to the fee structure of alter-native investments, with the incentive fee and alignment of interest and so forth, some of the most talented money managers have migrated to hedge funds or private equity or real estate; so we want to get access to the smartest people in the investment universe,” says John Cox, director of alternative investments at the advisory firm Charles D. Haines LLC in Birmingham, Alabama. “They also have tools available to them that you don’t have in traditional money management.”

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Some hedge funds are actually profiting off of the subprime mortgage debacle and the market volatility that it has helped cause.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com

Wells Real Estate Investment Trust, the public, nontraded REIT with about $5 billion in assets across the country (mostly class A office buildings) has changed its name to Piedmont Office Realty Trust Inc.

Sponsored By:

DWS Scudder, the U.S. retail brand name of Deutsche Asset Management, provides financial advisors with a comprehensive selection of innovative investment strategies.
www.dws-scudder.com