Investment Strategies – Page 17
-
Asset Class Reports
Credit: Coupons and principles
While corporates increasingly have to turn to capital markets for funding, now is the time for investors to push their ESG requirements, writes Joshua Hughes
-
Asset Class Reports
Credit: What’s in a name?
Confusing terminology aside, ‘short-duration high-yield’ looks like a compelling opportunity for low-volatility yield pick-up. Martin Steward assesses the risks, and underlines the importance of defining objectives
-
FeaturesIn defence of pro-cyclicality
Adina Grigoriu asks, is pro-cyclical risk management necessarily a cost – or can it be an unexploited source of performance?
-
Interviews
Surviving the seven years of famine
Rogge Global Partners operates out of one of London’s most spectacular offices, the neo-Gothic Sion Hall, its traders toiling beneath the gaze of stained-glass images of heroes of the English Reformation.
-
Special Report
Food for thought
Nina Röhrbein asks what pressure investors can put on food companies to improve their products and address health issues
-
Features
A nugget of risk reduction
Marcus Grubb summarises a new study of the diversification benefits that gold offers to a euro-based institutional investor
-
Features
There will be no escape
Iain Morse finds that custodians will face greater levels of liability for the assets they safeguard for clients under AIFMD rules
-
Asset Class Reports
European Equities: ‘You can’t handle the truth’
Martin Steward considers a contrarian strategy that is not afraid to go neutral when the market is not in contrarian mood
-
Asset Class Reports
European Equities: Stock prices follow earnings? Sometimes...
Frédéric Dodard looks at European stocks through the 1970s, 80s, 90s and 2000s and finds that the market will often pay much less for companies – or much more – than the fair price suggested by their earnings
-
Asset Class Reports
European Equities: Staying in style
Surprisingly, Martin Steward finds that it was just about possible for pan-European contrarian value to hang in there during 2011’s quality-growth world
-
Interviews
On an ambitious journey
The name ‘AXA’ was chosen in the early 1980s, so the story goes, because it can be easily and uniformly pronounced in any language, and, as far as anyone knows, it also doesn’t mean anything rude anywhere around the world. But slick branding can’t make you good at everything, of course.
-
Features
Keiretsu culture
Japan’s corporate governance culture has been moving, albeit slowly, towards Western models. But Nina Röhrbein finds that the Olympus scandal could lead to some push-back
-
Special Report
Sovereign debt in sights of ESG ratings
Nina Röhrbein finds out how the sovereign debt crisis is affecting countries’ ESG rating
-
Asset Class Reports
European Equities: Two different routes to risk
How should you be positioned at the inflection point of one of the strangest economic cycles in history? Martin Steward finds the consistent performers rotating into pro-cyclical stocks in both top-down and bottom-up strategies
-
Asset Class Reports
European Equities: A stockpickers’ environment…
… if you can wait a decade for active risk to pay off. Joseph Mariathasan finds managers enjoying rich pickings for the long term, by taking account of – but also looking through – the dominant macro themes
-
Asset Class Reports
European Equities: The middle way
Successful risk-taking in European equities during 2011 was more nuanced than it first appears, finds Martin Steward
-
Features
One year later
The Tohoku earthquake of March 2011 was one of the most devastating natural disasters of recent times. Martin Steward asks if it has changed the way investors look at their Japanese equity portfolios
-
Asset Class Reports
Small & Mid-Caps: The 800-pound gorilla
UK exposure – or lack of it – has been decisive in European small and mid-caps. But Martin Steward finds that managers have also had to contend with a difficult ‘risk-on, risk-off’ environment
-
Interviews
Alternatives – with pensions DNA
Sometimes a company’s best investments aren’t in businesses or financial markets. When Jack Coates took over management of the pension plan for US forest products firm Weyerhaeuser in 1985, he was returning to full-time work after the company let him pursue a PhD while working part-time in his international treasury position. That investment was to pay off handsomely. His research led him to understand how alternative investments could be relevant to the challenge he saw before the Weyerhaeuser pension plan, which was under-funded and needed to generate higher returns without incurring too much downside volatility.
-
Features
One step forward, two steps back
Given the problems in Europe, distressed debt would appear to be all the rage, writes Joel Kranc. But waiting out events might prove to be even more lucrative
