Temma Ehrenfeld

Young American investors feel well prepared to handle their own budgets and are optimistic about the future — but that does not mean they trust financial advisers.

Despite the recent stock boom, nearly half of investors said they trusted financial services companies less in 2010 than in 2009, according to an Edelman survey released Thursday.

Only 10% of Americans with $5 million to $25 million in investable assets described themselves as "very wealthy" in a recent survey by Spectrem Group, and 28% considered their wealth just "moderate."

Even with a long-term shift to passive investing, "managed solutions" packaging exchange-traded funds should also grow rapidly, said Scott Burns, Morningstar's ETF expert.

Assets held in domestic exchange-traded funds reached a record $995 billion at Dec. 31.

Rollovers into traditional IRAs occur during the working years, not just at retirement, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Hedge fund, private equity, infrastructure and real estate asset management fees are down in both pooled and separately managed accounts, Mercer LLC's 2010 Asset Manager Fee Survey found.

Individuals aren't as interested in Roth conversions as many advisers expected. According to a Mercer survey, more than half of employers said that their employees hadn't asked for the option, and 45% said they had no plans to offer it.

Counselors have typically been young, about 30 on average, but according to David Jones, the president of the American Association of Independent Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies, more older people are entering the field.

Investments pinned to nonfinancial criteria grew more than 13%, to $3.07 trillion in the three years through 2009, a troubled period when all professionally managed assets increased less than 1%, according to the Social Investment Forum Foundation.