ICI Viewpoints Content

On Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund released its latest Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR), including a chapter on the asset management industry and financial stability.

Today I submitted the following letter to the editor of the New York Times:

On Wednesday, March 25, I’ll testify before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs about the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s process for designating nonbank firms as “systemically important financial institutions,” or SIFIs.

Treasury yields fell sharply today and the stock market jumped. Wouldn’t it be nice if mutual funds could take credit? Unfortunately, they can’t. Any orders that mutual fund investors place to buy or sell shares anytime today before 4:00 p.m. won’t hit the market until 4:00 p.m., just...

ICI recently conducted a survey of its members that sponsor exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to collect information on authorized participants (APs)—typically market makers or large institutional investors with an ETF trading desk that have entered into a legal contract with an ETF to...

In a recent blog post discussing why we believe flows from long-term mutual funds do not pose risk to the financial system, we posted a chart showing that outflows from bond funds are modest even during periods of stress in the financial markets.

As the Wall Street Journal noted this morning, ICI has deep concerns about the data used in a White House memorandum to support the Department of Labor’s push for tighter standards for financial advisers who help investors in employer plans—such as 401(k)s—and individual retirement...

The Federal Reserve System can’t get past its perplexities on the role of mutual funds in financial stability. Time and again, the Fed’s governors, regional presidents, and staff return to the same hypothetical risks and speculative scenarios in which mutual funds somehow pose a...

In two previous ICI Viewpoints posts, I discussed the muted response of investors in long-term funds―which invest primarily in stocks, bonds, or both―to financial stresses, and examined some of the characteristics of funds and their investors that help explain that muted response.

As discussed in a previous ICI Viewpoints post, regulators and others have voiced concerns that long-term funds―funds that invest primarily in stocks, bonds, or both―might experience large outflows during a financial crisis, adding pressure on financial markets.