Mindy Lubber: A Sustainability Story
After a long hiatus, The Sustainability Story podcast from CFA Institute is back. In the first new episode, Paul Andrews, head of Research, Advocacy, and Standards at CFA Institute, speaks…
Quant Screening: Three Questions for Investment Managers
Evaluating investment managers is a challenging endeavor. Why else would asset owners expend so much time and resources, often with the aid of consultants, to conduct manager searches? Proper manager…
Public Debt: Four Ways to Deleverage
“There are these people who think we don’t have to take all these tough decisions to deal with our debt. . . . It’s as if they think there’s some…
Active vs. Passive Revisited: Six Observations
Two institutional managers I know — one at a Fortune 500 defined benefit pension fund and another at a municipal pension fund and later an endowment — believe in going…
ChatGPT and Large Language Models: Six Evolutionary Steps
The evolution of language models is nothing less than a super-charged industrial revolution. Google lit the spark in 2017 with the development of transformer models, which enable language models to…
Do Sentiment Metrics Matter to the Markets?
Consumer spending accounts for almost 70% of nominal US GDP. As such, consumer sentiment ought to have some correlation with market performance. Financial journalists certainly act as though it does.…
Digital Asset Markets: Five Important Themes
Digital assets have had a wild ride over the last year. Several centralized crypto companies, from the hedge fund Three Arrows Capital to the crypto exchange FTX, have failed, while…
SEC Scrutiny of ESG-Related Disclosures: What to Expect
Taking nonfinancial information into account when conducting financial analyses is not entirely new to professional investors and analysts. But the demand for information beyond revenue, earnings, and other conventional accounting…
Distress Investing: A Tale of Two Case Studies
With recession forecasted in many economies this year or next, distressed situations will be an important source of deals for prospective investors. But what will matter is whether the targets…
Regret and Optimal Portfolio Allocations
How is risk defined in portfolio optimization objective functions? Usually with a volatility metric, and often one that places a particular emphasis on downside risk, or losing money. But that…
