Money fund assets rise to $2.748T - Total money market mutual fund assets rose $9.56 billion to $2.748 trillion for the week, the Investment Company Institute said Thursday.

Asset allocation portfolios from Principal Funds hit milestones – Principal LifeTime portfolios hit the 10-year mark this year, displaying strong performance since their inception in 2001, according to The Principal Financial Group. With assets totaling more than $18 billion, Principal LifeTime is one of the first target-date fund series in the industry and the fourth largest target-date fund offering.

Principal Strategic Asset Management (SAM) portfolios, the target-risk fund series, turns 15 this year. The SAM portfolios are subadvised by Edge Asset Management, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Principal Financial Group.

Dividends can signal growth potential in emerging markets, says Forward Management – Dividend-paying stocks in emerging markets tend to outperform non-dividend-paying stocks through a complete market cycle, according to new study released by Forward Management, LLC (Forward). The study suggests that the "dividend signal," a process of using dividends as a filter to help identify stocks with higher- than-average growth potential, may be even more valuable to emerging markets investors than those in developed markets, where the trend was initially identified.

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