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Bond giant Pimco posted $5.5 billion in net outflows across its U.S. open-end mutual funds in May, extending the firm’s record outflow streak to 12 straight months, class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Morningstar data showed on Tuesday. _0"> Pacific class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Investment Management Co, a unit of European financial services company Allianz SE, had $1.94 trillion in assets as of March 31, according to the firm's website. (Reporting by Sam Forgione; Editing by James Dalgleish )

Activist investor Carl Icahn acquired 6.8 million common shares of class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Fannie Mae and 5.7 million common shares of class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Freddie Mac from Fairholme Funds, a court filing showed Tuesday. _0"> Icahn, a billionaire investor known for taking big stakes in companies and pushing for management change, bought the shares in the major mortgage financiers in March, the filing showed. As of March 31, Fairholme owned a 1.65 percent stake in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Fannie Mae and a 2.64 percent stake in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Freddie Mac , according to Thomson Reuters data. Mutual fund manager Bruce Berkowitz is the founder of Fairholme Capital Management. Regulators took control of Fannie and Freddie, which own or guarantee about 60 percent of all U.S. home loans, in 2008 after losses stemming from subprime mortgage investments pushed them to the brink of insolvency. Both co

Many amateur genealogists start digging into their family histories just to see what is out there and then get seriously hooked. They may be in for an arduous and costly project. That happened to Janet Judge about six years ago after her children challenged her to identify family members in old photos. The 59-year-old nurse from Albany, New York, started with a $300-a-year subscription to Ancestry.com, which at 14 billion records has the largest online collection of genealogical significance. What Judge found enabled her to identify all the people in the pictures. After that, she kept on going. So she paid an additional $275 to one of Ireland's family research centers, a collection of county-based groups that can be found online, and spent a couple of thousand dollars for two trips to that country. Interest in genealogy is on the rise as more and more old records are digitized. Without leaving home, someone in the United States can find material filed in Poland 150 years ago

One morning in April, my Yahoo email account was disabled for no apparent reason. As a freelancer, my email account is my professional lifeline. But it wasn't just the security threat or potential for lost business that upset me. It was my personal history: jokes my brother sent me weeks before he died, emails from friends I hadn't seen in years, love letters from my wife. In the seven weeks since my account was shut, I've spent about 12 hours on hold with Yahoo customer service and corresponded with the company at least 15 times. Meanwhile, fearing a security breach, I changed the passwords to all of my online accounts, ordered new credit cards and had the credit reporting agency Equifax put my status on "fraud alert." I emailed contacts not to use or trust my old email address which may have been hacked. And I still don't have my email account back. Since then, I've learned it wasn't a security threat that was the problem. It was a question of

Once upon a time, bingo was the biggest game in town at the local senior center. But you're far more likely to find today's seniors manning a slot machine at the local casino - and some have become gambling addicts. Problem gambling among older people is on the rise. Seniors have time and money on their hands, and the proliferation of class="mandelbrot_refrag"> casinos in most regions of the country has made gambling more convenient. “What we are seeing is that seniors are the backbone of the modern casino industry,” says Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG), a non-profit organization that advocates for programs and services to help problem gamblers and their families. "The class="mandelbrot_refrag"> marketing and promotion to seniors is light-years from what it was." Experts say gray gambling addiction will become more prevalent as the baby boomers age. “Boomers are the first generation

In the wake of a spate of data breaches highlighting the vulnerability of companies that hold consumer information, class="mandelbrot_refrag"> MasterCard Inc announced last week it would apply the same rules to PIN-based debit card transactions as those used for credit cards: zero liability when fraud is reported. "Fraud and identity theft have been in the news a lot lately. We want to give cardholders peace of mind," says MasterCard spokeswoman Beth Kitchener. The breach at Target last year, which affected more than 40 million customers, is still a top concern for many. For consumers who have MasterCard-branded debit cards, the extension of zero liability means some things will change, while others won't. Here is what you need to know about the new policy, which takes effect on Oct. 1. Q: Does this mean that using a debit card is just as safe for transactions as using a credit card? A: Not exactly. While those who have MasterCard-branded debit cards

It is this year’s bargain: central banks will remain easy, allowing asset prices to march higher despite all those pesky details about growth and inflation. There is lots of evidence to show this is a genuine phenomenon - the ECB is expected to ease on Thursday, perhaps in new and creative ways, and the Federal Reserve, while theorizing about some fine day it will raise rates, is careful not to encourage any breath-holding. And class="mandelbrot_refrag"> markets are doing their part, with asset prices of both stocks and bonds rising slowly and steadily, all amidst unusually low volatility. Not only is the benchmark class="mandelbrot_refrag"> S&P 500 index up 5 percent this year, and 17 percent over one full year, yields on benchmark 10-year U.S. government bonds have fallen strongly in most major markets, powering gains almost across the board in fixed income. Low volatility may be key to understanding both what is happening and why. Investors app