ishares

Remember the flash crash? That was the 20 minutes on May 6, 2010 when the Dow lost almost 1,000 points before partially recovering. A new analysis by iShares suggests what may have caused the flash crash and includes three proposals to keep it from happening again.

It looks like no-commission trades for exchange-traded funds are here to stay. Several of the largest ETF brokerages -- including iShares, Invesco Powershares and Charles Schwab -- say they don't plan to charge commission anytime soon.

Retail investors who think they're missing out on the big money because they don't have a million bucks to get into a hedge fund should consider themselves lucky. Hedge funds had their best year in a decade in 2009 -- and yet they couldn't even beat the broader market.

The number of mutual funds available to investors will contract in 2009. It will be the first time that there has been such a contraction since the carnage of the market after the internet bubble burst in 2002. At the same time, the market for ETFs is rapidly expanding due, in part, to lower...