All Ahead of the Curve articles

  • John Butler
    Features

    Can central banks retain their independence?

    October 2024 (Magazine)

    Over the last few decades, following central bank behaviour has been a rewarding investment strategy. That is why there is now a community of people employed to analyse every word central bank officials utter.

  • Chris Brightman
    Features

    Change is required as populations age

    September 2024 (Magazine)

    During a recent weekend in the artsy California mountain town of Idyllwild, my wife and I enjoyed a performance of a local band. Seated near us was a gentleman wearing a T-shirt proclaiming, We the People ARE PISSED OFF.  The message on this shirt caught my attention.

  • Klotter Don
    Features

    The next Magnificent Sevens are hiding in plain sight

    July/August 2024 (Magazine)

    Like the so-called FANGs that preceded them, one could argue that the Magnificent Seven group of US tech mega-caps that accounted for a large portion of market performance in 2023 are now a part of Wall Street’s history books. Besides two names that have continued to pull away from the pack, the group is no longer commanding investors’ undivided attention.

  • Deborah Ng_GMO_2
    Features

    Why investors should focus on Scope 3 emissions

    June 2024 (Magazine)

    The investment industry is preoccupied with reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions in portfolios to meet net-zero commitments. However, this focus will not provide a way to effectively manage climate transition and physical risk. 

  • Per-Otto Wold
    Features

    Modelling shows net-zero investing can be profitable

    May 2024 (Magazine)

    Since the acceptance of the Paris Agreement in 2015, which bound nations to a legal commitment to reduce global temperatures, there has been a clear shift towards net-zero investing. While socially responsible investments are crucial for the mitigation of climate change, recent calls to row back on ESG funds suggest some hesitation. 

  • Lauren_Stagnol picture
    Features

    Measuring the impact of non financial factors on GDP growth

    April 2024 (Magazine)

    In their paper entitled Modeling the Links Between Economic Growth, Socio-economic Dynamics and Environmental Dimensions: a Panel VAR Approach, the authors attempt to quantify direct and indirect causalities between economic growth and extra-financial dimensions, including demographics, biodiversity, climate change, political stability, inequalities and economic growth. 

  • Adrian de Valois-Franklin
    Features

    AI’s future in investment management is evolutionary

    March 2024 (Magazine)

    The explosion of ChatGPT-style large language models (LLMs) has ignited a heated debate over the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in investment management and its role in institutional investor portfolios. However, amid the noise, a groundbreaking application of AI has quietly arisen, which has the potential to revolutionise the industry.

  • Rene Wijnen 19fc9d97735e2b66bdf17c8ffba4a0846b0986ce290832f66f9a8c34552c88200
    Features

    Refining how factors impact investment returns

    February 2024 (Magazine)

    Investment management has undergone a significant transformation with the introduction of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing. It emphasises a more holistic approach that goes beyond financial returns to assess long-term sustainability.

  • Navigating Generative AI? Consider a Framework
    Features

    NLP can help identify linkages between equity market peers

    January 2024 (Magazine)

    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

  • Hinchcliff Rob
    Features

    The great desyncronisation age in global financial markets

    December 2023 (Magazine)

    Investors are witnesses to the end of an era of synchronised global growth, when China could be counted on for outsized expansion that provided a broad cross-border lift for economies, industries and asset classes.

  • Choueifaty Yves
    Features

    Pricing the decline of democracy for investors

    November 2023 (Magazine)

    History does not progress in a linear way. Science, democracy, technology, arts, the economy and any other type of evolutive process advance and recede in chaotic movements, even though they ineluctably move towards progress. Those recessions and pull-backs often go unnoticed at first, at least to the casual observer. And yet, they end up profoundly sanctioned by all stakeholders including the economy, financial markets and investors. 

  • Maloney_T_3930_0566-Edit
    Features

    Inversion anxiety: what’s up with yield curves in 2023

    October 2023 (Magazine)

    For over half a century, each time the spread between US 10-year and three-month yields turned negative, indicating an inverted yield curve, a recession followed, sooner or later. In 2023, the yield curve has been more than just a little inverted. 

  • Gustavo Medeiros
    Features

    The US dollar’s declining status as a global reserve currency

    September 2023 (Magazine)

    The recent US debt ceiling negotiations have brought into question the viability of the US dollar’s status as a global reserve currency. Long-term investors have been reviewing their strategic asset allocation away from the currency, seeking to diversify their exposure and to take advantage of long-term investment opportunities. 

  • Alison Savas copy
    Features

    Ahead of the curve: Is growth back or is it a trap?

    July/August 2023 (Magazine)

    It is likely you have heard about ‘value traps’. They are low-multiple companies that are priced at an ever expanding discount to the market and structurally underperform as fundamentals weaken due to new competition and, in extreme scenarios, may even face obsolescence.  

  • Wu Harry Bfinance
    Features

    Ahead of the curve: The rise of multi-manager models for alternative investing

    June 2023 (Magazine)

    Fifteen years after the ‘global financial crisis’, multi-manager strategies for alternative investing have not only shaken off their tarnished reputation but have evolved 

  • Tom Leake
    Features

    Ahead of the curve: What happened to equity volatility in 2022 and what next?

    May 2023 (Magazine)

    Something strange happened last year. Expectations about the future level of volatility in US equities – implied volatility – behaved in a very unusual way. In a falling market, the price of implied volatility normally rises because equity falls are associated with a worsening macroeconomic outlook, implying more market risk. Expectations of future volatility therefore increase. 

  • Amitrano Giuseppe.1
    Features

    Ahead of the curve: Introducing the concept of a carbon risk-free curve

    April 2023 (Magazine)

    As global investors and companies progress towards their net-zero emissions targets, the concept of a carbon risk-free curve becomes increasingly relevant within the fixed-income market. In our view, this curve should provide a reference for evaluating the risk levels of bonds in relation to their issuers’ CO₂-equivalent (CO₂e) emissions and can therefore help investors to assess the impact of changes in CO₂e emissions on the yield spread of fixed-income bonds. 

  • Swen Werner_State Street
    Features

    Ahead of the curve: The missing elements in the digital currencies debate

    March 2023 (Magazine)

    The recent contraction of the cryptocurrency markets poses questions about the viability of digital currency as an asset class for institutional investors. However, these developments have not undermined the efforts of central banks to pursue their own digital currency initiatives. 

  • Amy Caruso
    Features

    Ahead of the curve: Time to automate collateral management

    February 2023 (Magazine)

    The resilience of financial markets has been tested several times in recent years, from the so-called ‘dash for cash’ at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020 to the spike in UK Gilt yields in September 2022.

  • nguyen que
    Features

    Ahead of the curve: Is small cap the next mean reversion trade?

    January 2023 (Magazine)

    By now, most investors have noticed a rebound in value relative to growth in equity markets. After underperforming growth over the past decade, value stocks are experiencing strong mean reversion and outperforming significantly.