Investment Instruments

Chief Executive Officer Sam Walshs pay compared with the companys average worker is deemed to be disproportionate, PIRC, a U.K. adviser to institutional investors with more than 1.5 trillion pounds ($2.5 trillion) in assets, said today.

Not everybody is enamored of these vehicles, including the Department of Labor, which has said it will have a discussion sometime in the future about how target-date funds can be made more standardized and transparent.

South Koreas biggest pension funds are cutting holdings of local debt to buy stocks in the U.S. and Europe, saying the days when the Asian nation could be counted on to outperform developed markets are in the past.

Vanguard Group Inc., the third- biggest provider of exchange-traded funds, gained ground on larger competitors this year after gathering 10 times as much money into its ETFs than the rest of the U.S. industry combined.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index could gain as much as 15 percent over the course of this year, according to Pimco Deputy Chief Investment Officer Virginie Maisonneuve.

Investors and retirement plan fiduciaries want greater returns from their target-date funds, but it is important to know what the risks are.