Unstructured Finance

By Jennifer Ablan and Matthew Goldstein

It is small wonder mom-and-pop investors are showing no love for U.S. stocks for a fourth consecutive year.

Not only has the U.S. economic recovery remained fragile, but the so-called “headline risk” is dominating investor psyche again.

On Monday,  the Dow Jones Industrials Average extended its “June Swoon” ending flattish after being down for most of the day, after Reuters reported that finance ministers and central bank governors of the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized nations will hold a conference call on Tuesday morning amid increased concern about the European debt crisis.

There’s also speculation that the Federal Reserve will continue with a third round of its bond purchases—better known as Quantitative Easing—after last Friday’s awful employment report for May. That helped send the Dow down more than 2 percent and dragging the index into negative territory for the year.

Much also has been made about  Facebook’s tumultuous IPO turning mom-and-pop investors off from U.S. stocks.

By Jennifer Ablan and Matthew Goldstein

Wall Street may hate financial regulatory reform, but lobbyists certainly love it—especially ones working on behalf of giant asset managers PIMCO and BlackRock, which control a total of nearly $5 trillion in assets.

Last year, PIMCO and BlackRock both upped their lobbying expenditures in a big way.

The not-for-profit group OpenSecrets.org reports that Bill Gross’s Pacific Investment Management Company spent $450,000 on lobbyists last year, up from $120,000 in 2010. BlackRock’s spending on lobbyists rose to $2.5 million in 2011, up from $1.45 million in the prior year.