PhillyDeals: Vanguard Asset Allocation Fund comes to an end

Vanguard Group

has ended one 24-year effort to outguess the stock and bond markets.

Malvern-based Vanguard's Asset Allocation Fund, founded in 1988 after a stock market collapse briefly spooked investors, was designed to let managers shuttle clients' money between S&P 500 stocks, U.S. Treasurys, and money-market funds - whichever the advisers thought was likely to pay best in the near future.

On Friday, the fund, managed by Mellon Capital Management Corp., was folded into Vanguard's Balanced Index Fund, which offers a fixed asset mix of 60 percent stocks/40 percent bonds, designed to rise and fall with the markets. No more day-to-day human discretion.

Vanguard proposed ending the $8.6 billion Asset Allocation Fund in the fall, when it told the Securities and Exchange Commission it wanted to convert a group of actively managed funds (where humans made buy-and-sell decisions) into passive indexed funds (run by algorithm).

What's in it for investors? As Vanguard noted, indexed funds charge lower fees than actively managed funds.

But that's not much compensation for the money Asset Allocation left on the table in the last few years due to its relatively poor performance, wrote Daniel P. Wiener, publisher of the Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors newsletter.

Wiener compared Asset Allocation to Vanguard's older Wellington Fund, which also mixes stocks and bonds. Wellington, managed by Wellington Management Co. since 1929, has recovered from the 2008 stock market crash and set new price highs; Asset Allocation still hasn't.

"Vanguard simply went with the better horse," Wiener concluded.

Chris Lencheski

, who joined

Comcast-Spectacor's Front Row Marketing Services

unit in October after boss

Richard Sherwood

retired, said Front Row had signed to represent the

Sam Schmidt Motorsports

IndyCar team and would negotiate new sponsors for driver

Simon Pagenaud

and Schmidt's fast Honda cars.

Lencheski, a motorsports-industry veteran who also used to own a minor-league pro hockey team in Iowa, said Schmidt hoped to challenge Roger Penske's rival team and other dominant IndyCar operators.

"Sam is having an enormous success for a young organization" in Indy-affiliated races around the world, Lencheski told me.

Front Row's job is to find companies that want to reach high-end, iPad-using, tech-savvy Indy fans. Lencheski noted that Front Row parent Comcast's NBC networks televise Indy races. "That helps us," he added.

Past Front Row racing clients include the Nascar 5-Hour Energy 500 at Pocono Raceway, and races at tracks in Dover, Del.; Millville, N.J.; Nashville and Memphis, Tenn., and Talladega, Ala.

Spring labor

Bell Nursery, of Burtonsville, Md., said it would recruit more than 900 drivers, loaders, display, and plant-care workers in the spring for seasonal tree and garden jobs at Home Depot stores in the Philadelphia area and nearby states. More at www.bellimpact.com.

The announcement follows the U.S. Labor Department's new tougher guidelines for employers who want to import foreign nursery workers and other labor under the H-2 visa program.

Some real estate, at least, is still gaining value.

Owners of New York's Empire State Building, 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, are trying to raise $1 billion through an initial public stock offering (IPO).

That's more than 17 times the $57.5 million that investors led by Peter Malkin paid the previous owners, including Donald Trump and Japanese investors, when the 102-story office tower changed hands in 2000.

It's not just that New York real estate has recovered. It's also that Malkin initially bought the tower only after acquiring its complex, long-term office leases, enabling his group to better exploit rising Manhattan rents.