All Features articles – Page 23
-
FeaturesStrategically Speaking: Capstone Investment Advisors
Last spring’s exceptional market volatility proved the mettle of at least one set of strategies – volatility-focused hedge funds. The CBOE Eurekahedge Tail Risk Hedge Fund index returned a bumper 51.64% in the first three months of 2020 alone against a broad hedge fund market index return of -7.96%, and was up 34.8% for the year.
-
-
-
FeaturesIPE Quest Expectations Indicator - March 2021
Vaccination figures are rising steadily, but are still at a relatively low level. The US and UK, both important vaccine producers, lead the field with the EU and Japan lagging. As the speed of vaccination has increased, supplies have become a problem, except in the UK. This has caused bad feelings in the EU to the point where a trade war was threatened. New vaccines are in the regulatory pipeline but market shares have largely already been divided in the developed countries. The discovery of new COVID-19 mutations and their resistance to vaccines are an additional risk.
-
FeaturesPerspective: Targeting net zero
Ambitious ‘net-zero’ carbon reduction goals are the latest in the evolution of asset owners’ engagement with climate change
-
FeaturesStrategically Speaking: Mondrian Investment Partners
Clive Gillmore is a rarity nowadays among asset management CEOs in that he is keen to discuss what he sees as the difficult moral choices embodied in ESG investment
-
FeaturesThe pandemic end-game
Overcoming COVID-19 and ensuring no recurrence is proving to be a formidable challenge for the global economy. The worst may still lie ahead. Even health systems in developed markets are creaking at the seams with the second and third waves of the pandemic. More transmissible mutations of the virus are making the task even harder.
-
FeaturesBriefing: Tide turning for ESG fixed-income
The supply of ESG-aligned bonds is increasingly underpinned by regulatory pressures and client demand for products targeting non-financial objectives. As the investable universe grows, so the number of funds and assets will increasingly find their way towards fixed-income ESG solutions. However, to strike the right balance between financial and non-financial returns investors should look for ESG-authentic leaders with good risk-return capabilities
-
FeaturesLong-term matters: Stop investing in autocracy
Europeans observing the US ‘near miss’ constitutional crisis have a choice – be spectators or show responsibility
-
FeaturesBriefing: The sum of all fears
Three years on from the onset of MiFID II, market participants, governments and regulators are assessing its outcomes and considering adjustments.
-
FeaturesAhead of the curve: Has the period of painless diversification ended?
With interest rates falling to historical lows the reality of a new financial landscape is confronting investors. It is one where the typical relationships between assets has come into question. In addition, basic ideas around diversification and portfolio construction no longer seem to match with the available investment opportunities.
-
FeaturesBriefing: Active ways to prosper in EMs
On the battlefield on which active managers fought their passive enemies for investors’ custom, there was one patch of higher ground that seemed easier to defend – emerging market equities.
-
Features
Accounting Matters: Auditing the auditors
There is widespread consensus that the audit sector is not fulfilling its potential, and that previous attempts at reform have been ineffective. As the impact of high quality audit goes far beyond the boardroom, when pension funds rely on audited financial statements for their capital allocation decisions, it is ultimately their individual members’ capital that is at risk.
-
FeaturesFixed Income, Rates, Currencies: Same again in 2021?
The relief from the farewells to 2020, and welcoming a Brexit trade deal, has waned in the face of rising COVID-19 infection rates. There have also been further lockdowns across swathes of Northern Europe as well as in Japan, Thailand, and South Africa to name a few. The vaccine-generated light at the end of the tunnel which appeared last year, seems rather distant, and possibly dimmer too.
-
-
-
FeaturesIPE Quest Expectations Indicator - February 2021
Interest has shifted from contamination and mortality data to vaccination figures. In this field, the US and UK are doing well, while the EU and Japan are lagging. Political risk is perceived to have gone. Donald Trump’s tendency to self-destruct is creating opportunities for the Republican Party to heal while Democrats are preparing an economic support package.
-
FeaturesResearch: The shift from virtue to value
In the final article in a series of two, Pascal Blanqué and Amin Rajan argue that the success of ESG investing rests on a just transition to a low carbon future
-
FeaturesPerspective: Litigation - state of pay?
Changes in legislation like the UK’s Consumer Rights Act 2015 have led to an increase of class actions led by pension funds as they seek to recover investment losses
-
FeaturesESG: Engaging with sovereigns
One of the narratives and unfolding developments in the world of ESG is that of its broadening to asset classes beyond public equity. This generally keeps the focus on corporates, however, while another emerging strand is about sovereign issuers.
