WEEK IN REVIEW

Where the money flows like water

As the Dow Jones Industrial Average headed upward past the 9000 line in the week ended June 8, investors poured $7.45 billion in U.S. stock mutual funds, more than twice the previous week’s $3.18 billion. International stock funds fared even better on a percentage basis, reports Trim Tabs Financial Services Inc., going from $155 million to $4.01 billion.

This news came as Fidelity Investments raised rates for sluggish online traders and dropped them for slightly busier bees. Beginning July 17, electronic trades of up to 1,000 shares will cost $25, rather than $19.95. If you make at least 12 trades in any 12-month period — down from 36 trades –the price drops to $14.95.

Meanwhile, Charles Schwab Corp., No. 1 in discount brokerage to Fidelity’s No. 2, reported its average number of daily trades in May dropped to 84,400, down from a record 101,000 in April. That’s bad news for discounters, especially online, where, like a kid with a boombox, volume is king.

Vanguard Group, No. 2 in mutual fund assets to Fidelity, announced that its brokerage division is dropping Wheat First Securities Inc. as its clearing agent in favor of Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette’s Pershing Division, partly to provide secure Internet trading and an integrated voice-response trading system.

Pershing Division? Is World War I about to start again?

What goes around…

Lee Munder, 52, is selling 85% of his part of Munder Capital Management in Birmingham, Mich., to partner Comerica Inc. That will leave the Detroit banking company with 88% of the company, which manages $51 billion with 32 mutual funds.

Comerica sold part of the outfit to Munder in the first place so it could better compete with managers who give workers a piece of the ownership action. Let’s try again.

Time for a swap

Congress has a couple of derivative decisions to make: Whether to override a Financial Accounting Standards Board ruling that public companies report their fair-market value on balance sheets starting in mid-1999, and whether to stop the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating over-the-counter derivatives right away. The Federal Reserve Board, banks and securities dealers oppose the former regulation; the same posse, joined by the Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, opposes the latter.

Don’t be Crabbe-y

Liberty Mutual Life Insurance Co.’s Liberty Financial Cos. (which owns Stein Roe & Farnham Inc. and Colonial Group Inc., among others) is paying $147.5 million in cash and stock for Crabbe Huson Group Inc. and its $5.3 billion of assets. James Crabbe, 53, will stay to run the Portland, Ore., firm, while Richard Huson, 58, retires to battle cancer.

The company’s contrarian outlook has brought 30% growth in managed assets in five years, despite disappointing performance. That’s just contrary.

Coffee, anyone?

Those Brazilians know how to live. Steely-eyed Sao Paulo stock traders took a two-and-a-half hour break to watch their national team play the opening game in soccer’s quadrennial World Cup in France (The defending champions didn’t precisely beat the kilt off Scotland, winning 2-1).

National TV also broke into the communications minister’s attempts to explain the government’s $11.7 billion sale of its stake in the country’s phone company, Telebras, to show live video of the team going to the stadium.

Soccer’s seductive samba beat will close the Sao Paulo exchange two hours early for the next two games as well: against Morocco tomorrow and against Norway June 23.

Wings spread

Four years ago, when American Express Co. spun off Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. the way a butterfly gets rid of an old cocoon, Lehman was the tattered remnant of such Wall Street names as Shearson, Hutton, Hornblower, Weeks, Hemphill, Noyes, Hayden and Stone. Well, the cocoon became a butterfly, with the year’s best-performing stock among big investment banks, up 58% to the neighborhood of 80. Maybe Amex wishes the brothers hadn’t left home.

Bloomberg News contributed to this report