Quovo: A Putnam's reinvention of the mutual fund

Another new start-up enters the social investing space, this time with an intelligent crowd-sourcing component to weed out the losing stock-pickers.

By Mina Kimes, writer

Quovo founder Lowell Putnam

As Lehman Brothers slid towards its demise in the summer of 2008, many of the investment bank's younger staffers found themselves with time on their hands. One banker, Lowell Putnam, says his team passed the hours by working on their personal portfolios and MORE

Pension pain off the charts

Big company pension funds are in their worst shape in at least 15 years, thanks in no small part to falling interest rates.

So says Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which issued a report Friday estimating the aggregate pension funding deficit at S&P 500 companies at $380 billion. That's up 44% from a year ago and represents a funding gap of almost 3% of the index's market capitalization.

30-year Treasury yields' MORE

Parsing the short-sighted, China-bashing midterm ads

Members of both parties are using China as a scapegoat for America's economic woes. But China is a key trade partner for many of these states, which is going unnoticed in the sometimes xenophobic attack ads.

With midterm elections only days away, a spate of political ads has emerged that treats China like an economic plague. Though polls show that the Democrats risk losing control of the House of Representatives, it MORE

No more spark? Fuse Capital joins the walking dead

Over the years, I've written a lot about Fuse Capital, the venture capital firm that also has gone by such names as ComVentures and Velocity Interactive Group. Much of it has been negative, as firm boss Roland Van der Meer has fired partners as if he were auditioning for the Steinbrenner role on Seinfeld. Plus, the returns have been anything but stellar.

This week, Fuse took what might be its death blow: Ross Levinsohn, a MORE

Dollar details on the Five Below deal

Last month, "extreme value" retailer Five Below announced that it had received an investment from private equity firm Advent International. No financial terms were disclosed, except that existing shareholder LLR Partners would retain a "significant ownership stake."

Today, Five Below told the SEC that it recently raised $194 million in new equity. None of the company's insiders are talking, although one did say that it was "reasonable" to conclude that this MORE

Pre-Marketing 10.29.10

Morning call: Stocks to open lower.

By the numbers: The Commerce Department releases third quarter GDP figures at 8:30am, with expectations for 2% growth. Second quarter GDP grew at 1.7%.

Econo-watch: Sewell Chan writes that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke thinks more needs to be done to turn around the economy and revive employment, despite the coming of QE2.

Paul Volcker is working hard to keep his namesake rule from becoming toothless.

European consumer prices MORE

For startups, there's more than just hits and misses

By Fred Wilson, contributor

There are a lot of "falsisms" being bandied about in startup land these days. And one that really bothers me is the idea that returns on startup investing are "bimodal."

For those who don't speak geek, bimodal means there are one of two possible outcomes. And in this case, those two outcomes are a total bust or a huge, Google-style win.

If you buy into that logic, then you MORE

The case for gold stocks

Is it time to buy gold stocks?

Prominent gold fans are saying yes, reasoning that shares of miners haven't kept pace this year with the rise in the price of gold. The gold price is up 23% for 2010, compared with a 20% rise in the NYSE Arca Gold Bugs index, which tracks the shares gold producers such as Goldcorp (GG) and Barrick (ABX).

Will the gold stocks close the gap?

But MORE

Dick Fuld sort of hits the jackpot

Finally, some good news for a change: Dick Fuld is getting $10 million!

No, the guy who raked in nearly half a billion over 15 years while running Lehman Brothers into the ground didn't win the lottery.

Just a little off the top, please

Instead, he will get the money from Lehman's insurers to settle a suit filed by the Booth Foundation, a Florida charity that sank $22 million into Lehman debt MORE

Rarer still is your interest in Molycorp

Maybe the rare earths aren't as rare as we thought.

Shares of the rare earth stocks, notably Vancouver-based trader Rare Element Resources (REE) and Colorado's Molycorp (MCP), plunged Thursday after the New York Times reported China had resumed shipments of rare earth elements.

You'd send that mineralization COD

Shares of the Van Eck Market Vectors Rare Earth Strategic Metals exchange-traded fund dropped 1% in their debut, reversing the morning's 2% gain.

Molycorp, which MORE