Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 735
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Features
High-yield at low ebb
The Merrill Lynch High Yield Master Index in September suffered its biggest monthly fall since its inception. It declined –6.42% during the month, taking its third-quarter fall to –6.07%, which in itself was the biggest such drop since the third quarter of 1990. In addition, the spread versus Treasuries at ...
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Features
Climbing the wall of worry
There is far too much liquidity in the markets but at long last some positive signs beginning to seep into economic data. This is the view of John Dreyer, head of equities at Fortis Investment Management (FIM) in Paris. “We are very happy right now. Basically, the bullish stance that ...
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Features
Markets have embraced 'V' shaped recovery
Equity markets, which plunged in the aftermath of the terrible events of 11 September, have more than made up the lost territory in the past few weeks. On the surface, this suggests that nothing material happened on the day of the attacks. Obviously, this is wrong. The world has changed ...
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Features
Ready to go pro-cyclical
Global equity market return has now been negative for six quarters in a row, except for the first quarter of 2001. This means that the downturn is almost as long as the 1973–74 oil crisis. The effects of the attacks are very difficult to quantify but growth forecasts are reduced ...
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Features
US managers defiant
The determination of companies affected by the attacks on the World Trade Centre to get back to business is something to behold. Few following events in America can have missed Cantor Fitzgerald chief executive Howard Lutnick’s emotional interview on ABC news. Over 400 companies were housed in the two towers, ...
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Features
Public funds rally round the flag
Their efforts didn’t help the US Stock Exchange much, during the first week of resumed trading after the September 11 terrorist attack. But US pension funds did their best to try to stabilise the financial market at such a difficult moment. On September 14, for example, a group of US ...
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Features
Risk control to dominate
The fall-out from the attacks on New York and elsewhere have opened the debate about asset allocation and whether long term changes need to be made to investment strategies. Gordon Sharp, director of investment consulting at KPMG Pensions in London, says that there hasn’t been any radical change in the ...
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Features
Implementing strategy shifts
Looking at the practical implications for pension funds wanting to implement strategies in response, Nizam Hamid, director of portfolio and index research at Deutsche Bank, says the first issue for institutional investors in the current market conditions has been how to put effective hedges on existing positions. “A more important ...
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Features
Equity lessons to be learned
When we talk about the devastating effects the US terrorist attacks have had in the equity markets, we have to remember that this has been the last chapter of very long market underperformance. Concerns among institutional investors about returns in their equity portfolios did not start after last month’s dramatic ...
