All Features articles – Page 24
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FeaturesLong term matters: What kind of decarbonisation matters most?
This article was written on the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement. In 2015, the world committed to keep warming below 2°C, meaning decisive annual reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Instead we have had a 7% increase in GHG since 2015 and are on track for about 3°C warming with a high risk of irreversible tipping points.
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FeaturesFixed Income, Rates, Currencies: A very different recovery
Amongst the remarkable happenings in 2020, from startling news of a pandemic to viable vaccine and beyond, has been the speed and scale of interventions from central banks and governments.
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FeaturesBriefing: Japan emerging from its invisible lockdown
Japan is all too often portrayed as being different from other countries. Not just distinctive in the obvious sense that every country has its own national peculiarities. Instead, somehow unique in a way that makes it stand out from every other country.
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FeaturesBriefing: Still a strong case for US stimulus
The next awaited US stimulus programme remains a mystery. Congress must agree on funding specifics, but the final composition of the Senate will be unknown until this month. Republicans and Democrats have been battling over spending priorities since COVID-19 struck last spring, with competing priorities.
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FeaturesBiodiversity can be measured
Last year was clearly the year of the pandemic. Perhaps the connection between zoonotic disease and biodiversity loss may explain why it has also been the year that biodiversity has become a theme of great interest for investors. Yet current environmental, social and governance (ESG) data and metrics do not cover biodiversity adequately.
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FeaturesStrategically Speaking: Hendrik Bartel, TruValue Labs
What makes ESG data providers stand out? For TruValue Labs, the answer is to apply AI and machine learning to thousands of unstructured data sources to enhance ESG investment processes
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: Options trading as a portfolio diversifier: pilot or passenger?
Options can provide insurance against market volatility, but require detailed knowledge to ensure success
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FeaturesIPE Quest Expectations Indicator - January 2021
US COVID-19 figures were rising rapidly at the time of writing. Western European figures were divided. Many showed a climbdown from the second wave but Germany, the UK and the Netherlands were faced with growing figures. Japan’s statistics were up, forming a third wave. In a few weeks, we will know how the deployed vaccines work in practice.
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FeaturesResearch: Resilience is the new watchword
In the first of two articles, Pascal Blanqué and Amin Rajan ask whether the current volatility in asset prices is a buying opportunity or the halfway stage in a prolonged bear market?
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FeaturesIs sustainability mispriced?
Living in the developed world over the past 50 years, life has been stable, even idyllic, for most people. That is certainly compared with their grandparents and previous generations who lived through two world wars and the Spanish flu. But, as COVID-19 has shown so cruelly, there are existential dangers that can lie hidden. These can rip the established world order asunder if not tackled beforehand.
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FeaturesPerspective: Markowitz is still modern
Thirty years after he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Harry Markowitz’s groundbreaking work from the 1950s still powers financial innovation
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FeaturesBriefing: Feast or famine
With the end of the COVID-19 pandemic still out of sight, any forecast of the size of economic damage it will inflict has to be viewed with caution. Yet there seems to be a consensus that default rates on leveraged loans will stay elevated throughout 2021 and beyond.
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FeaturesUS endowments: Success breeds success
Perhaps no single group of institutional investors elicits as much fascination and admiration as US university endowments – in particular those of the Ivy League, and among that elite group the Yale and Harvard endowments in particular.
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FeaturesFixed Income, Rates, Currencies: Vaccine boosts bullish markets
The swings in outcome predictions as the vote counting began in the US election were large. From the realisation that there was no blue wave of Democrat success, to a possible re-election for Donald Trump, to a Joe Biden win but with a Republican Senate, it was tricky to comprehend the investment implications.
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FeaturesStrategically Speaking: BlueBay Asset Management
Nowadays, it seems fair to ask asset managers whether they believe they can fulfil their clients’ needs while at the same time doing their bit to fight COVID-19.
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FeaturesBriefing: An unfortunate lack of ambition
The second Capital Markets Union (CMU) Action Plan of the EU Commission lacks ambition. This at a time when the EU Commission wants to set an industrial policy for the EU to bolster competitiveness in key sectors. It also comes shortly before the UK’s departure from the EU. Yet a vision of what the EU wants to achieve, by when and how, is missing.
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FeaturesAhead of the curve: Grasping intangible assets
Even the name hints at the challenge: intangible assets are hard to value. Recently, investors have looked to these assets to explain a decade of underperformance by value stocks. But new research suggests no tangible performance benefit from adjusting for intangibles.
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FeaturesLong term matters: A time to be hopeful and active?
Jaap van Dam, principal director of investment strategy at PGGM, is right: pension funds need to understand politics. We have two additions. First, the ‘outside-in’ focus – how politics affects portfolios – is a great starting point. But investors cannot stop there, they have considerable influence on politics whether for good or bad.
