GAINING ON GOLIATH Exchange-traded funds are growing rapidly. In December they attracted nearly as much new money as mutual funds, which netted $11.6 billion. ETFs are relatively new pooled investment vehicles, whose shares can be traded throughout the day. Total assets doubled last year, to $72 billion. Impressive but pocket change compared with the $7.2 trillion invested in U.S. mutuals.
RISKLESS? Money-market funds are the safe ways to get better-than-bank-account returns. Yet lots of them are stuffed with commercial paper--unsecured short-term IOUs. During the California energy crisis, utilities defaulted on that paper, prompting fund companies to eat the loss so their...
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