One well-known columnist has an item up on MarketWatch that makes some predictions about the fund industry for the new year. You'll likely agree with many of them. There will likely be some resolution to the gifts and gratuities scandals that engulfed Fidelity last year. I wonder if other companies end up also paying money back to shareholders. Performance advertising is likely to remain in vogue. But two of the predictions concern exchange traded funds. Will we be seeing an actively managed ETF next year? Few would be surprised. And will an ETF specialty firm end up being snapped up by a larger mutual fund company? Well, it would make some sense; there could be some smaller innovators that end up with big firms. But you have to wonder why the big firm wouldn't go ahead and create its own indexes.

For more:
- here's the MarketWatch column