Investment Strategies – Page 15
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Features
Toxic assets, or toxic prices?
Charlotte Moore finds that the anticipated flow of bank assets is more likely to be a trickle – thanks to the very regulation that was supposed to open the floodgates
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Special Report
Commodities: Puffed-out dragon?
China’s slowing economy – and its longer-term transition away from investment-led growth – is raising questions about ongoing demand for commodities. But Martin Steward suggests that it’s too early to call time on the ‘supercycle’
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Special Report
Commodities: Equities suffer from dematerialisation
Is recent share-price disappointment a sign of things to come in the extractive industries? Lynn Strongin Dodds finds mining becoming more expensive just as China, one of the biggest commodity markets, begins to reduce its demand
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Special Report
The trouble with fracking
The full environmental impact of shale gas extraction is not known, so investors must engage with companies to make sure they are acting responsibly, says Nina Röhrbein
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Interviews
The implementation game
Russell’s recent move to Seattle from its historic location in Tacoma, Washington, just a few miles to the south, had the inevitable effect of pleasing urbanite employees happy to work and live in the bigger city and inconveniencing others who liked the old panoramic view over Commencement Bay and who faced a longer commute or higher real estate prices.
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Interviews
Practising what it preaches
As one of the world’s leading mezzanine and credit managers, Intermediate Capital Group spends every waking hour analysing, interrogating – and worrying over – the way companies manage their balance sheets. So it should come as no surprise that the firm is pretty handy at managing its own.
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Features
Unconventional wisdom
The search for yield is leading investors to hunt down illiquidity premia. Florian de Sigy and Benjamin Keefe make the case for secondary hedge fund interests
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Special Report
Smart Beta: A smart beta taxonomy
Daniel Leveau and Des Morris categorise the alternative indexing universe and recommend that investors build diversified, smart-beta portfolios. By focusing on risk and return, they should achieve the desired results
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Special Report
Smart Beta: How equal-weighting wins
Yuliya Plyakha, Raman Uppal and Grigory Vilkov discover a surprising crop of non-systematic alpha generated by the monthly rebalancing process
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Special Report
Smart Beta: Debt and demographics
Investors should look for risk to be compensated by attractive premia. But Christoph Gort argues that market-cap weighted bond indices fail to deliver this. New index methodologies will allow for more efficient global bond investing
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Asset Class Reports
US Equities: Storm clouds gather over US economy
Shaniel Ramjee worries that markets are misreading the seriousness of the US fiscal position – a situation complicated by a looming budget cut of $1.2bn
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Asset Class Reports
US Equities: Still value to be found on upside
Martin Steward finds some surprising potential for growth at the heart of generally defensive portfolios
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Features
Boarding time approaches
For liquid investors with an eye on the medium term, investing in the maritime industry could be just the ticket, argues Marcel C. Saucy
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Features
Avoiding the shadows
Iain Morse reports on the growing use of real-time collateral management
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Interviews
On avoiding hostages to fortune
There is no disputing Northern Trust’s powerhouse status in global custody and asset servicing in Europe. In the UK alone, a big custody contract was renewed by the London Borough of Hillingdon’s pension scheme in 2012, and, along with several similar renewals, it added €19.5bn in custody assets for 13 new clients during 2011, including major names such as the Lothian Pension Fund, the Lancashire County Council Pension Scheme and the Superannuation Arrangements of the University of London (SAUL). Transition management mandates were won from the likes of the Northumberland County Council and Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea pension funds. Losses – such as the East Riding Pension Fund custody mandate that went to State Street – were rare exceptions in the effort to remain a go-to service provider.
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Interviews
De-leveraging, beautiful and beastly
Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha is famed as the world’s largest hedge fund, earning $13.8bn for investors in 2011 alone. But today, over coffee in a luxury London hotel, the focus for Bob Prince, co-chief investment officer of the Connecticut-based firm, is on a beta strategy called ‘risk parity’.
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Special Report
Smart Beta: New generation of choices
The ‘smart beta’ revolution is taking investors from one ‘passive’ solution – the cap-weighted index – to many. Rachel Fixsen looks at the questions this raises
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Special Report
Smart Beta: Re-balance of payments
Market-cap equity indices have come in for stiff criticism over recent years, but Martin Steward finds their shortcomings are nothing compared with the bond market. A new breed of indices attempts to address their worst failings
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Features
Restless continent
Africa is set for a busy year of elections – and it has already experienced an old-fashioned coup. Charlotte Adlung assesses the political risks behind the investment opportunities
