As I get older I find that I value material things a lot less. I am still partial to gadgets, but soft things like conversations, walks – experiences – have started to matter to me a lot more than things. My writing was supposed to be about investing, how to make $2 out of $1, but existential topics have lately had a greater appeal for me than discussions about stocks or the economy.
We asked hundreds of equity and fixed income managers how they are integrating ESG factors within their investment process. Which countries are lagging their peers? Does AUM correlate with ESG integration? Today, we share our findings.
Women are transforming the global economy. The financial services industry must evolve both to better serve women investors, and to assess the impact that women’s decisions have on markets worldwide – now and in the decades to come.
It was neigh on ten years ago, the world was just about half way through the ‘Great Recession’ and I was sending out a newsletter wondering how much lower the Dollar could plunge. The Euro/USD pairing was touching 1.50 at one point. How the times have changed!
The size premium’s relatively poor performance in U.S. stocks over the seven-year period from 2011 through 2017 caused many investors to question its persistence. I will address whether that skepticism is justified.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. A tale of two world leaders, U.S. president Donald Trump and China president Xi Jinping—both of whose countries have among the world’s best economies right now. But whereas Xi is playing Santa Claus to the rest of the world, doling out loans to finance-starved countries, Trump is playing Scrooge, waging an economic war with Canada, the European Union, China and others.
The traditional wholesaler is dying. The future of wholesaling will combine analytics and portfolio construction.
Now that the US equity bull market has officially hit the history books as the longest on record, some observers are concerned it could soon stumble. Grant Bowers, vice president and portfolio manager, Franklin Equity Group, outlines why he thinks it could keep running into 2019.
When looking to build investment portfolios that target and solve for specific client objectives, we should be conscious of our competencies. We believe finding the appropriate expert to address or complement investor needs is just as important as acknowledging proficiencies.
Last week, we covered Turkey’s geopolitics and history. This week, we complete the series, starting with a discussion on Turkey’s economy with a focus on the changes brought by the Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by President Erdogan. We also examine how foreign debt affects Turkey’s economy and financial system, highlight the impact of the 2016 coup and analyze the causes of the current crisis in Turkey. From there, we discuss the debt problem and Turkey’s options for resolving the crisis. As always, we conclude with market ramifications.
Let’s consider two seemingly conflicting ideas.
Can both of those be right? I think so.
Infrastructure investment promises are politically popular, but actual funding has been slow to follow. Italy’s bridge collapse illustrates the real risks of putting off infrastructure projects. The shortage of truck drivers in the U.S. is driving inflation, and this labor market gap looks likely to last.
Gold prices moved up close to 2 percent today, and gold stocks climbed even higher following comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. During his speech at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, Powell reiterated the central bank’s commitment to raise interest rates gradually while the U.S. economy continues its strong performance.
Read Harold Evensky's latest Newsletter.
The CFP Board wants its credentials to be a mandatory requirement for all advisers who hold themselves out as financial planners. If its lobbying efforts to this end are successful, the Board would then become the de facto regulator of the financial planning profession, which is the organization’s goal. But the Board’s disingenuous position on the fiduciary standard and its long history of putting its own interests ahead of those of consumers and its members make the Board decidedly unfit for this role.
At Smead Capital Management, we want to avoid excitement and expense in the marketplace. When a sector of the stock market gets white hot, there are usually a few stocks which dominate the market activity and see explosive price appreciation. We like to think that one of them becomes the thermometer of the market, in effect showing the temperature of the stock market.
My good friend Marc Lichtenfeld from the Oxford Club has always been savvy in following such strategies. I invite you to learn from his investment journey in this special Q&A.
Munis may offer U.S. taxpayers key benefits as they contemplate the end of the economic expansion.
The car you drive isn’t just a status symbol. In the age of digital communication, Bluetooth and wired vehicles, advisors can use their cars to drive leads by converting boring downtime during a commute into active prospecting.
Stocks hit the ground running to start the second half of 2018.
Having a beard is a great way to set yourself apart and grow your business.
The belief that detailed quantitative measurement will make performance easier to evaluate, manage efficiently, and improve has survived repeated failures of the doctrine. In fact, the failures serve only to bring forth calls for more of the treatment. Only very rarely is it admitted that quantification doesn’t work and should be scrapped.
The number of publicly listed companies in the U.S. has fallen steadily since 1997. More companies have delisted, in fact, than gone public in every year of the past 20 years except one, 2013. Put another way, the pool is getting smaller even while the population and economy are expanding.
Portfolio managers Dan Ivascyn and Alfred Murata discuss the impact of higher market volatility and how they are positioning the Income Strategy for change ahead.
We don’t know how long ago we met Frederick “Shad” Rowe, but we are glad we did, because our conversations with him have been net worth changing.
This week I have something special for you: an update of “The Distribution of Pain,” one of 2017’s most popular letters. I say “popular” just in terms of feedback and reprint requests. It was thought-provoking but also sobering. I started with the original version, re-edited to clarify a few points, and added some new comments. It is still a timely, important topic.
JGBs: Canary in the coal mine?
A question I’m often asked involves the merits of investing in private real estate as an alternative to publicly available REITs. To answer that question, I will turn to the historical evidence.
A landmark study looked back at more than 100 years of data and 23 countries to determine if there are reasons to believe the cross-sectional patterns in factor returns will persist, or whether they were just anomalies that tended to disappear after publication.
When you think of the top 1 percent of all income earners in American households, how much do you think this group rakes in? Millions? Tens of millions? What about the top 10 percent?
Kick back, grab a cool beverage and read on about how to strengthen your online privacy (compliments of GDPR); a Plutus Award financial publisher honor you may want to aim for; and a handy robo-advisor resource.
A new book focused on how institutional asset managers build sufficient trust to attract and maintain assets is helpful to advisors, albeit on a smaller scale. What I didn’t expect were the key traits that inspired trust.
We make every effort to understand the way that investors go to extremes over what we call the “well-known fact” in the stock market. A “well-known fact” is a body of economic information which is known to virtually everyone in the marketplace and has been acted on by anyone with capital.
Infrastructure is not a glamorous topic — it isn’t satirized on late-night TV, nor is it trending on social media. But the need for increased infrastructure investment is real across the globe. Given expected demographic trends, disruption by new technology and insufficient spending in the past, we at Invesco Real Estate believe infrastructure-related companies could be poised for decades of growth.
Women face at least 12 unique financial and life challenges related to long-term retirement planning. Addressing them can be overwhelming and uncomfortable. Only by understanding the issues can you develop strategies that will provide the greatest chance of achieving your clients’ goals.
The price of bitcoin surged above $8,000 on Tuesday for the first time since May after the Group of 20 (G20) meeting in Argentina concluded last weekend with little urgency to take regulatory action on cryptocurrencies. In a communiqué, finance ministers and central bank governors expressed confidence that the technology underlying alt-coins “can deliver significant benefits to the financial system and the broader economy.”
The Northern Trust Economics team tracks China’s fiscal policies and exchange rate volatility, and reacts to recent comments that undermine the Fed’s independence
For industry veterans, annuities conjure the “bad old days” of pushy insurance companies offering rich commissions to snake-oil salesmen with Rolex-knockoffs peeking out from French cuffs.
Anticipate before you participate in the market. This is a classic piece of advice I like to give investors and have written about extensively in my CEO blog, Frank Talk. Financial markets are influenced by relatively predictable cycles and trading patterns, and by better understanding these we are able to react thoughtfully to headline noise or unexpected market developments.
In the second quarter volatility waned and performance decoupled as divergent backdrops created variances in returns for assets classes and markets across the globe. The winning trades for the second quarter were in the U.S. energy sector, U.S. small companies, and a select group of technology and consumer discretionary stocks.
Modern finance has discovered that stocks that share certain fundamental characteristics called “factors” exhibit different return and risk characteristics than the overall market. These factors or “dimensions of the market” can be classified as: dividend yield, volatility, momentum, quality, size and value.
Will they or won’t they? With the U.S. yield curve flattening to new cycle lows, whether or not the Federal Reserve will stick to its planned rate-hike path is a key question – and could soon become the key question – for financial markets.
As our analysts and researchers travel the world surveying businesses, they hear a lot about disruption—the ability of new often-technology-backed companies to disrupt the status quo.
Headlines about the death of the American shopping mall have become so common that the phrase “retail apocalypse” has its own Wikipedia page. But this is a death wrongly foretold—and that creates investment opportunities.
Today’s popular stocks have literally overwhelmed the stock market in the last four years and six months. To understand today’s financial euphoria, we will analyze three terrific movies made by the actor, Jim Carrey. In Liar Liar, The Truman Show and in Bruce Almighty, we learn morals which we believe should guide us in the long-duration investment process.
The Northern Trust economics team explores agriculture markets globally and in the United States.
Over the next few years, financial markets could be set for a series of “Rude Awakenings,” as we forecasted in our latest Secular Outlook. The global economy is transitioning out of a post-crisis period characterized by remarkable stability, and the changes ahead could be jarring for investors.
I’ve asked countless advisors if they ever had the experience of saying something they thought was really interesting, and having the other person pause, reflect and respond, “Tell me more about that?” This article is about the only two who said “yes.”
The economic calendar is a light one, and many regular participants are on vacation. The most important data include PPI, CPI, and JOLTS, the best read on a tightening labor market.
Emerging market stocks are trading near bear market territory, but that’s par for the course for longer-run, rising returns.
