The Department of Labor unveiled a final 401(k) fee disclosure rule on Thursday that requires plan providers to give more details about what employers pay for retirement plan administration and other services. The rule, which will apply to all providers that work with 401(k) plans, requires providers to disclose to employers specifics about their fees, including those for money management, recordkeeping, and retirement plan administration. Failing to comply with the new rules could result in penalties for providers, including excise taxes.

The Treasury Department has proposed two regulations to make it easier for those approaching retirement to buy an annuity through their company-funded pensions or 401(k) savings accounts. One proposal would make it simpler for traditional pension plans to let workers take part of their balances as lifetime income streams and take the rest as lump sums. The other would encourage 401(k) and IRA plans to offer participants the option of dedicating part of their savings to a longevity annuity, which may not begin the guaranteed income payouts until age 80 or 85.

A Fitch Ratings study points to a gradual resurgence of risk appetite in the U.S. tri-party repo market, as seen in an increase in riskier forms of repo collateral and a shrinkage in repo haircuts. The basis of Fitch's findings is repo transaction data taken from a sample of the 10 biggest U.S. prime money market funds accounting for roughly $90 billion in transactions as of the end of last August. The growing presence of riskier forms of repo collateral has been primarily driven by structured finance, representing one-fifth of all repo collateral in the Fitch sample.

Data from FactSet, a financial data and software company, finds that daily trading volume in the 50 most popular U.S. ETFs fell to its lowest level since the end of 2007 in January, which has raised trading costs in some smaller funds. Coinciding with the decline in ETF trading volumes was a drop in volatility and correlations in January, which appears to have made index-investing strategies less popular. The ETF volume slippage also appears to be a result of less trading by hedge funds, but ETF investment has stayed healthy, with data from Lipper indicating that U.S. equity ETFs saw a net inflow of nearly $11 billion in January.

In a recent study Morningstar says that ETF managed portfolios have become "one of the fastest-growing segments of the managed account universe." Managed ETFs follow a strategy in which ETF investments usually comprise more than half of portfolio assets, and the roughly 370 managed strategies supplied by 95 financial service firms that Morningstar tracks collectively held $27 billion of assets last September—a 43 percent gain over 12 months. Morningstar estimates that ETF managed portfolios retain between $40 billion and $100 billion overall.

T. Rowe Price has posted a profit every quarter since going public in 1986, in part because the firm sat out the dot-com boom in the 1990s. As Facebook prepares for its IPO, the firm is betting this time is different. T. Rowe holds the biggest stake of any mutual fund company in Facebook. It is telling investors that Internet companies are more mature now than during the 1990s, when companies with no earnings prospects went public.

An analysis by the New York Times of SEC investigations over the last decade found nearly 350 instances where the agency has given big Wall Street institutions and other financial companies a pass on sanctions. Those instances include waivers permitting firms to underwrite certain stock and bond sales and manage mutual fund portfolios.

Fred Tomczyk, TD Ameritrade president and CEO, discusses the outlook on retail trades and investor sentiment.