All Features articles
View all stories of the same content type.
-
Features
Securitised credit keeps on shining
For a market with a difficult past, some could even say an image-problem, securitised credit has been performing remarkably well in recent years.
-
Features
Contrasting global economic growth fortunes
Economic growth patterns across the world paint a picture of contrasts, ranging from surprisingly robust in the US to soft and struggling in China, with the stagnant euro area narrowly avoiding a technical recession after posting zero GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2023, following a 0.1% decline the previous quarter.
-
Features
A bumper year for convertible bond issuance
The convertible bond market ended 2023 on a strong note with its main index – the Refinitiv Global Focus – returning 6% in the fourth quarter. The optimism has continued into 2024 on the back of reasonable valuations, historically low equity volatility and better opportunites.
-
Features
IPE Quest Expectations Indicator - March 2024
Climate change is coming to a trend break as the low-hanging fruit has been picked.
-
Features
Conflict and elections set to dominate the investor landscape
Middle Eastern tensions are running high, with violence flaring up across the wider region. Combined with the ongoing attritional destruction in Ukraine, this is impacting world trade, and it seems certain that international conflict will continue to be a source of great concern in 2024.
-
Features
MiFID II reforms: Bye bye unbundling?
A key part of the 2018 MiFID II package, the requirement to unbundle research from execution costs shook up the European asset management industry and changed the relationship between investment managers and their clients.
-
Features
IPE Quest Expectations Indicator - February 2024
IPE’s monthly poll of market sentiment, asking 50 asset managers about their six to 12-month views on regional equities, global bonds and currency pairs
-
Features
Insurance-linked securities wind brings good news for investors
In the two decades prior to 2022, the negative correlation between stock and treasury bond market returns has been a key driver of institutional investor portfolio construction. Fixed income allocations provided investors significant relief during equity market downturns and increased expected risk-adjusted returns for the popular 60/40 stock/bond portfolio.
-
Features
Net zero’s bond index problem
The fixed-income space has not been short of sustainability innovations over the years.
-
Features
NLP can help identify linkages between equity market peers
Natural language processing in AI provides a way to gain insights from unstructured data at scale, allowing access to information across a broad set of investment opportunities
-
Features
Will delayed economic bad news hit the market this year?
Global economic growth was below potential in 2023, but still markedly stronger than the forecasts had been indicating at the start of the year, with the US leading the way and even the likes of Europe and the UK, though hardly stellar performers, posting better than expected economic activity.
-
Features
IPE Quest Expectations Indicator - January 2024
It is safe to predict that 2024 will be a year of desperate campaigning. Political surprises in the US and UK are possible and, this time, they do make a difference to markets
-
Features
Is the US economy finally heading for a soft landing?
Having come to terms with the higher-for-longer mantra, markets are grappling with ‘higher-for-even-longer’, as US economic resilience continues to challenge expectations of weakness while reducing the prospects for earlier interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve.
-
Features
Private debt managers bullish despite uncertainty
When the global financial crisis wreaked havoc across the banking sector, private credit emerged as a potential winner.
-
Features
Avoided emissions: measuring carbon that didn’t enter the atmosphere
A few years ago, a footwear producer’s claim that it was reducing carbon emissions in the economy because its customers walked rather than took the car provoked amusement among investment managers. It wanted to prove its product was healthier and greener than competing transport modes by claiming credit for emissions prevented from petrol use. This autumn, assessments of the role played by individual low-carbon products in replacing fossil fuels are again under scrutiny in the finance sector.
-
Features
Qontigo Riskwatch – December 2023
*Data as of 31 October 2023. Forecast risk estimate for each index measured by the respective US, World and Emerging Markets Qontigo model variants
-
Features
IPE Quest Expectations Indicator - December 2023
IPE’s monthly poll of market sentiment, asking 50 asset managers about their six to 12-month views on regional equities, global bonds and currency pairs
-
Features
Market volatility: low risk does not mean ‘no risk’
Efforts to produce an accurate estimate of market risk can sometimes turn into a pessimist’s paradise, leading to a paradox. If the outcome of the estimation looks positive, investors might feel that they should not count on it, and if it looks negative, the real outcome will probably be worse than expected. From that perspective, the third quarter of this year was a very unusual one, quantitatively speaking. Not only did both risk and return decline simultaneously – a rare event – but investor sentiment also turned negative during the quarter, ending at its lowest level since the March banking crisis.
-
Features
Regulators set sight on private market fund valuations
The current waves of rising inflation and interest rates, economic uncertainty and market volatility may eventually be remembered as just a temporary setback for managers of unlisted assets. But the regulatory initiatives announced in recent months, following pressure from investors and the public, could bring about deeper changes to the buoyant private markets industry.