Will They, or Won’t They? The Risk of Betting on the Fed
The world economy stared into the abyss on 16 March 2020. COVID-19 had sent country after country into lockdown, disrupting manufacturing supply chains and service sectors. Global US dollar liquidity…
ESG Fixed-Income Exposure: Index Providers Respond to Asset Manager Demand
What does the latest Index Industry Association (IIA) global membership survey reveal about current trends in indexes and benchmarks? Chief among the key data points is that the rapid expansion…
Have Central Bank Interventions Repriced Corporate Credit? Part 1
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced primary and secondary market corporate bond purchase programs as part of its response to the…
FTX: Crypto Is the Cure, Not the Cause
FTX is simultaneously the biggest fraud and the culmination of the largest banking crisis in the history of the crypto industry. But the FTX debacle has very little to do…
Manager Selection: The Power of Payoff
The most important portfolio manager skill metric is often overlooked. I often hear fund managers say, “I only need to get it right slightly more than 50% of the time.”…
The Alchemist’s Paradox, Central Bank Sovereignty, and the Fate of Crypto
“It is difficult not to marvel at the imagination which was implicit in this gargantuan insanity. If there must be madness something may be said for having it on a…
How Do Cryptocurrencies Correlate with Traditional Asset Classes?
For more on the crypto and blockchain phenomena, read Valuation of Cryptoassets: A Guide for Investment Professionals by Urav Soni and Rhodri Preece, CFA, from CFA Institute Research and Policy Center. The crypto…
How Goals-Based Portfolio Theory Came to Be
The following is excerpted from Goals-Based Portfolio Theory by Franklin J. Parker, CFA, published this year by Wiley. “I’ve heard people compare knowledge of a topic to a tree. If…
Conservatism: De-Risking the Profitability Factor
Profitability metrics are often the main focus in the search for high-quality stocks. But Profitability is not a defensive factor and may expose investors to a company’s aggressive profit-chasing, among…
Bonds and Fixed Income: Where’s the Hedge?
It is no secret that 2022 has been a rough year for pretty much all asset classes across the board. While US equities have fallen more than 20%, the average…
