ICON Advisers

Commentary

Value Oriented Bond Management Amid Economic Chaos
by Jerry Paul of ICON Advisers, 6/1/23

While markets are often efficient, the current market environment exposes a number of select areas within the bond market that exhibit less efficient behavior. Investors taking a value-oriented bond management approach may find ways to exploit the inefficiencies.
Commentary

ESG Investing: Sector, Industry & Stock Impact on ESG Performance
by Dr. Craig Callahan of ICON Advisers, 3/6/19

In this article, we show returns of portfolios comprised of high-ESG scoring companies. More importantly, we use attribution analysis to show contributions from sector, industry and stock selection within these portfolios.
Commentary

Insights from ICON Advisers: May 2018
by Dr. Craig Callahan of ICON Advisers, 5/8/18

A review of bonds, domestic equities, and international equities at the four-month mark of 2018.
Commentary

Time for Small Caps?
by Dr. Craig Callahan of ICON Advisers, 3/27/18

Dr. Craig Callahan of ICON Advisers explores whether it’s time for advisers to consider small-cap stocks in their client portfolio.
Commentary

Recovery Rallies: Are 2 Years, 6 Years, or even 9 Years Enough?
by Dr. Craig Callahan of ICON Advisers, 3/14/18

The stock market’s recovery is approaching the nine year mark and appears to have the potential to continue for a few more years.
Commentary

Deficiencies of P/E in Predicting Returns
by Dr. Craig Callahan of ICON Advisers, 2/20/18

We suspect the slope of the linear regression line is not as steep as those who use P/E to attempt to predict future returns believe.
Commentary

Spotlight on Active Management: Finding Superior Active Managers
by Dr. Craig Callahan of ICON Advisers, 2/2/18

“Further research into active management has helped this organization hone it’s criteria for finding superior active managers.”
Commentary

Real Interest Rates: The Mystery of Low to Non-Existent Real Returns
by Jerry Paul of ICON Advisers, 1/29/18

This paper explores why real returns have stayed persistently low in recent years and why they may continue to stay low for the foreseeable future.
Commentary

Recovery Rallies, Is Six Years Enough
by Craig Callahan of ICON Advisers, 6/5/15
Contrary to the bearish headlines, we at ICON believe that we are in the midst of a long-term recovery. With our valuation methodology as our guide, we believe there is enough value in the market to sustain a continued recovery. Furthermore, as we saw with the post 1987 market recovery, bull markets can last longer than 6 years. We believe there is still room for market growth in the current environment.
Commentary

Value Oriented Bond Management
by Jerry Paul, Zach Jonson of ICON Advisers, 3/2/15
Equity investors can be categorized into a broad range of equity strategies, including valuation-based approaches, whereas bond investors generally think in terms of interest rates and duration management. Professional investment managers have been taught that the market is efficient and while this may often be true, we believe there are a number of select areas within the bond market that exhibit less efficient behavior. This paper will discuss these potential inefficiencies and how “value oriented” bond management looks to exploit the inefficiencies. First we need to define “traditi
Commentary

Behavioral Finance and the Bond Market
by Jerry Paul, Zach Jonson of ICON Advisers, 5/7/14
Over the last decade the concept of behavioral finance has received increased recognition in both the academic world and with investors. Modern Portfolio Theory makes three distinct assumptions: investors are rational, markets are efficient, and expected returns are purely a function of risk. In contrast, followers of behavioral finance generally believe investors are less than perfect and subject to many emotional biases. Said differently, behavioral finance differs from traditional finance in that it focuses on how investors actually behave, rather than theorizing how they should behave.
Commentary

Interest Rate Outlook - "Old Normal"
by Jerry Paul, Zach Jonson of ICON Advisers, 2/19/14
Contrary to a popular belief that interest rates are destined to rise significantly, at ICON we believe we may be re-entering the "old normal" where the U.S. Treasury 10-year yield remains between 2%-4% for an extended period of time. As can be seen in the following chart of interest rates since 1871, with a few exceptions this is where interest rates traded prior to the mid-1960s. From this perspective, the late 1970s appear to be unusual and the decline of the last 32 years is simply a return to normal, where rates can remain for many years in a setting of slower growth and low inflation.
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