Alternative Investments

Cotton prices climbed back near 10-year highs in New York on bets that strong demand will keep supplies constrained. Arabica coffee surged on sinking Brazilian exports.

Stand on the steps of The Royal Exchange in the heart of the City of London and you can picture the churn of people 200 years ago or more in what was becoming the world’s preeminent financial hub.

Soon – within the next two years – the SEC will wake up and start holding financial advisors who use TAMPs to the same fiduciary standards they hold them to in selecting mutual funds, ETFs, and other investment products. When it does, many advisors will be in trouble.

Sales of U.S. leveraged loans are likely to stay strong for at least the next few months thanks to private equity buyout activity that is showing few signs of abating.

Here is how I nudge clients (sometimes not so gently) to where they should be on their portfolio.

Alex Rodriguez’s goals in business started as soon as he turned pro. Now on the other side of one of the most successful—and controversial—careers in baseball history, his ambitions are accelerating.

A Pittsburgh insurance broker and a Richmond, Virginia forensic accountant have developed an alternative rating system for measuring the ability of life/annuity companies to keep their promises even in market crises. They call it the transparency, surplus and riskier assets ratio, or “TSR” for short.

In general, the more optimistic we are on the prospects of an investment, the more of it we’ll want to own. However, at extreme levels of bullishness, the normal relationship can be turned on its head and it can make sense to own less of an asset the more we like it.

Anyone gearing up for bond yields to surge in 2022 should think again. A global glut of saved cash has the potential to restrain an increase in rates, even as central banks dial back their pandemic stimulus.

As Goldman Sachs Group Inc. boss David Solomon chatted at a November dinner for retired partners, he mentioned that the firm will be among the country’s most profitable big public companies this year. But the veteran mergers banker Geoff Boisi was struck by how muted the excitement has been.

The year 2021 will be remembered as one in which markets tumbled down a rabbit hole and entered financial wonderland: A once-elite undertaking became more populist, tribal, anarchic and often downright bizarre.

Investors in the booming ethical bond market are having to swallow short term losses on the road to improving their green credentials.

An exceptional year for wealthy Americans, at least in terms of their financial health, just got better.

The best tribute to Vanguard founder John C. Bogle near the end of his long life cannot be repeated without heavy censorship.

It has been my tradition to informally rate the investment-related books I read in the past year. I have also included some novels and books of general interest. Here is my list of winners and losers.

At the end of every year, I like to look back on my work and see which themes and findings are as striking now as they were months ago. I’ve chosen ten ideas – and the ten charts to go with them...

One of cryptocurrency’s spiritual forebears, Timothy C. May, predicted in the 1990s that untraceable digital cash would allow online casinos, bank secrecy and money laundering to flourish. Although laws would be dodged, he said, the individual anonymity and freedom would be worth it — at least, until the inevitable government backlash.

The inflation wave that’s sweeping through the global economy is playing into an investment niche that a small group of people in finance have spent years developing: farmland.

The bloodbath in the frothiest corners of financial markets may have some venture capitalists wondering if it’s time to walk away.

Wall Street likes to warn that past performance doesn’t guarantee future results, but when it comes to the traditional 60/40 mix of stocks and bonds, it kind of has. Persistent inflation could bring that to an end.

For life settlements, open-ended funds offer more liquidity than closed-end funds, but they also have lower returns and the management and performance fees are often based on the net asset value of the fund – which can be hard to accurately assess for assets with unlevel cashflows.

How can advisors help clients who lack sufficient savings for retirement – those who accept the need to take on risk to achieve capital growth, but insist on a minimum income to fund essential expenses?

This third quarter update of Global Investment Report’s 18th annual global hedge fund survey highlights some of the remarkable distortions revealed across markets, while reporting on the current sentiment of leading investors and tracking how the top 50 funds have performed through the first three quarters of 2021.

The market for ESG-focused exchange-traded funds has been among the world’s hottest investment areas for more than two years now.

For the first time in four years, venture investors are backing more crypto and blockchain startups in the U.S. than they are in Asia—a sign that China’s crackdown on alternative currencies has chilled the country’s upstart industry.

There are so many things to do these days other than be a hard-charging investment banker or trader: Even Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has to offer more than just a ladder to riches to keep its people on board.

Vast sums are now pointed in the direction of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. That’s good news: We require somewhere between $100 to $150 trillion in climate investment over the next three decades, and ignoring global warming would prove a costly and potentially irreversible cataclysm.

Private equity firms, along with hedge funds, are significantly ramping up the amount they’re willing to pay specialists in sustainable finance, as a field once at the lower end of the pay scale moves closer to the top.

The climate crisis has provoked a debate about whether asset managers should disinvest from the most polluting companies or use their influence as shareholders to persuade firms to curb their carbon emissions.

As more and more advisors come to understand the compelling investment case for dedicating a portion of client portfolios to life settlements, the inevitable next question is where those assets fit in a portfolio allocation framework.

The sprawling Build Back Better Act contains a provision that would be transformative for a set of historically Black colleges and universities: tens of millions of dollars in annual long-term funding for scholarships.

New research shows that aggressively easy monetary policy has driven asset flows to high-yield corporate bonds. Those bonds now offer poor risk-adjusted returns and have made certain interval funds more attractive.

The idea that growth and success can be achieved at the expense of clients, diluting the value they receive rather than deepen it, is a myth. If you follow the 10 shifts in this article, you will deliver deep value to clients and run an excellent practice that allows you to enjoy the ride and the rewards.

The trading desk was just embarking on a second banner year when senior executives started defecting to the likes of Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Millennium Management. By this fall, many of the team’s heaviest hitters had gone.

Just conducting a survey isn’t enough. You need to make sure the survey is effective. Here are my tips for creating an impactful client survey.

Greta Thunberg threw the “greenwashing” charge at financial officials at COP26 last week in what has become a regular problem for companies grappling to become more environmentally friendly. But here’s one reason the slur is so widespread: measuring a carbon footprint is hard.

There are options emerging for retail investors seeking to invest in private equity like an institution.

There are at least three approaches that have been demonstrated effective in identifying skill in asset managers, offering investors the likelihood of superior future performance.

Asset management firms are increasingly tempted to meet their environmental obligations by withdrawing capital from companies and industries that do the most damage to the planet. But there’s a risk that the assets they offload will drift into the shadows of private ownership, where polluting practices will receive less scrutiny and therefore stand even less chance of being curbed.

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s premier business schools, plan to accept cryptocurrency as tuition for its online blockchain and digital assets program.

With their latest tax proposal, Democrats are going after an elusive target: U.S. billionaires, and their growing piles of untaxed investment gains.

Tom Giachetti counsels a confused and befuddled advisor (played by me, Bob Veres) who is seeking advice on common but complicated issues that have come up recently around the profession.

To show how exclusive you are, there’s nothing like turning away a billionaire. Two members of the three comma club were among those nominated to join R360, a new, invitation-only investment and networking group for people with net worth of $100 million or more.

Democrats lobbed fresh attacks on private equity firms Thursday, blaming the industry for driving up rental costs and contributing to America’s affordable housing shortage.